Transpositions Changes in the Key of Life
by Fictional Diva
Summary: Jack O'Neill finds out that life isn't static. Just when you've got it all figured out, there's always a curve or two to keep things interesting.
1. Transpositions Changes in the Key of Li...

Was there anything he hated more than paperwork?

O'Neill grabbed the sheets out of the printer behind him and slammed the folder shut. _Well, maybe the Goa'uld. Maybe._ And surprises. The bad kind that came up in the middle of missions, definitely.

Most recently he'd developed an certain antipathy for commanding Generals who decided to take a few days off and leave him in charge.

Not that he begrudged Hammond the leave time. If he had two of the cutest granddaughters in the world he'd probably be requesting leave every other week to take them to Disneyland. Kayla and her big sister Tessa deserved some quality time with their grandfather. He threw the folder into Davis's in-box with deliberate carelessness.

It just - _galled_ him - when Hammond announced both the leave and the temporary promotion with that shit-eating grin all over his face. The General knew exactly how much he hated being put in this position.

It wasn't the commanding part the bothered him. Making decisions that affected people's lives; that affected the course of Earth's relationships with the rest of the galaxy; the life or death decisions; the end-of-the world kind of stuff; that was easy. No problem. Bring it on. The more the merrier.

No. What torced him was all the damn _paperwork_.

Seeing the look on their temporary commander's face, the SF's jumped nimbly out of the way, saluting smartly, as O'Neill stormed down the steps to the Gate Room.

"Status?" He barked at the General's aid, Sargent Walter Davis, seated at the monitor. He knew the status well enough, it just gave him a charge to ask.

Davis winced, but, used to Colonel Jack O'Neill's moods, answered evenly. "SG-9 just made scheduled contact from their diplomatic mission to P3C-451, Sir. And SG-6 and 3 are due back tomorrow morning."

"Great. I'm outta here, then. You know how to get a hold of me." Davis nodded, his attention on his screen. O'Neill turned to go and tossed over his shoulder, "Oh, and Sargent, that..." And here he had to stop and remember that he was, temporarily, in charge. "That _important_ quarterly personnel report is on your desk."

"Yes, Sir." Davis called after the Colonel. He glanced at Sargent Siler next to him and rolled his eyes. The other man grinned before they both turned back to the Gate diagnostic Major Carter had ordered before leaving for her own down time.

Everybody on base, from the newest SF to General Hammond, respected Colonel O'Neill. He was the best. He and his team, SG-1, always found a way to turn a defeat into a victory. The aliens they'd met and formed alliances with trusted his word before anyone else's. And they always - always - came back. Heck, Colonel O'Neill had even been dead and brought back from it more times than Davis could remember.

And _everybody_ knew to steer clear of him when he'd been doing paperwork. The newbies always had to be clued in, and the General had made that Davis's job. Colonel O'Neill could come back through the Gate fresh from a hellish fire-fight with the Goa'uld and be practically cheerful, but after less than two hours of forms and mission reports, he'd be as snarly as a cornered dog.

Davis sent a nasty thought in the direction of his CO, two star General George Hammond, for leaving on vacation the week that the base quarterly reports were due. It made Davis think longingly of a possible apocalypse. Colonel O'Neill would at least be in a better mood.

O'Neill's infamous mood hadn't improved much by the time he negotiated Base security up to the parking lot. He sat behind the wheel of his pick-up and thought about what he was going to do that evening.

It would be a solitary pursuit, no matter what he chose. With Hammond off-base and him in the hot seat, the rest of SG-1 had some well-deserved leave. Major Samantha Carter, his blond and lanky second-in-command, had jumped on her motorcycle and headed off to spend some time with her brother and his family in San Diego. Teal'c, was on some planet or other with Bra'tac recruiting more Jaffa for their Rebellion. A busman's holiday digging up a Native American village in the Montana backwoods had been Daniel's choice for a vacation.

They'd all deserted him. Cheerfully, it had seemed. So he was on his own. He turned the ignition with a snort of disgust. _Okay, fine. _He'd just do something without them. Perfectly aware that his thought had sounded childish - and quite okay with that - he drove through the Base security gate and back towards Colorado Springs.

He didn't want to stay on-base. He was there enough anyway. Home, with a solitary beer and video games was too depressing. O'Malley's was a possibility. He could have dinner, play some pool, shoot the breeze with the regulars. But he didn't really want conversation in a well-lit, noisy, _happy_ place.

He wanted dim and smoky, with a surly waitress in a short skirt and high heels who'd ignore him. He wanted a jukebox that played bad country western music. He wanted a place where the beer was watered and the whiskey wasn't, and the food definitely wasn't vegan or fat-free or even healthy.

What he wanted was - a dive. _Oh, yeah._

He found what he was looking for not too far off his usual way home. From the outside at least, The Getaway had all the makings of a superior dive. The neon palm tree on the sign flickered fitfully in the evening twilight, on the verge of going out completely. Blue-painted clapboard siding was peeling nicely. Tinted windows protected the public from the immoral goings-on inside.

When he turned in the parking lot he sighed in relief. Harleys, banged up trucks, rusted sedans, and not one yuppified SUV crowded together on the gravel. In fact, his own extended cab Ford looked a little out of place as he parked it between a muddy jeep and a small herd of choppers.

He pulled open the slab front door with its porthole window and paused just inside to let his eyes get used to the dimness. Well, no country western music, and it wasn't nearly smokey enough, but a satisfying quiet pervaded, a hum of conversation broken by the crack of pool balls connecting and the clink of glasses.

It was a two-level dive. The upper level where he came in was backed by a long, gleaming mahogany bar that was probably an antique. Off to the left was the door to the kitchen, and several busy pool tables. Leather vests and tattoos, probably belonging to the herd of choppers, dominated the pool games. _Perfect_.

The lower level, much to his dismay, opened to his right out onto a bustling outdoor deck. Inside and out, the tables were nearly full. _Damn_. At least the waitresses had acceptably short skirts.

There was a small stage on his extreme right, empty at the moment but for a piano and stand-up bass. He could only hope that a really bad cover band was scheduled for tonight. That would make up nicely for the lack of a tinny jukebox.

He made his way to an open stool at the end of the bar farthest away from the pool games. A nod at the bartender, a huge black man with a head as bald as an egg and a loud Hawaiian shirt that looked big enough for a normal man to wrap around twice, had a beer sliding across the wood in his direction.

He sipped the cold brew appreciatively and settled in, pulling the hand-lettered menu closer. A pair of old men two stools over argued about baseball as he decided on dinner.

The Getaway was apparently a theme, with the food tending towards island and south-of-the-border fare. One of the short-skirted waitresses - Kelli, with an 'i', and unfortunately cute and perky - brought him a bowl of tortilla chips and took his order for a Volcano burger and fries.

The menu promised the hamburger was hot enough to grow hair on your tongue. He hoped so. He'd pay for it tomorrow - his stomach wasn't nearly as young as his mouth thought anymore - so it had better be worth it.

He was well into his second beer and surprisingly good mouth-searing burger when the argument started. One biker thought the other had scratched and the argument quickly degenerated into personal and familial insults, and menacingly raised cues. Friends of both men shouted impartial encouragement and suggestions from a safe distance.

Jack was just considering whether he should step in when the bartender slapped down a hand the size of a small dinner plate, making glasses and tortillas dance little jigs up and down the bar.

"You two!" Mr. Bartender had a voice that matched his body and it easily broke into the shouts. Jack's eyebrow went up in unconscious imitation of Teal'c at the broad Jamaican accent. "I tol' ya two: No more fightin' or ya won' come back here no mor'!" He pointed at one combatant, then the other, both managed to look guilty. "Now, ya settle it, or ya get out!"

The two men shared a look and then the smaller, looking sheepish - or as sheepish as someone who weighed an easy 350 could - replied. "Hey, Tommy. Don't get yer shorts in a wad. We was just havin' a discussion."

The bartender, Tommy, snorted. "Well, den, ya best be havin' a civilized one, or I'll haf ta come over dere an' bash your fool heads togetha'." And that was that.

Jack was disappointed. He wouldn't have minded a good bar fight, especially the mood he was in. Though the beer and the food were working their island magic and he could almost drum up a 'later, mon!' attitude. O'Neill watched as Tommy worked, keeping his bartender's eye on the former 'discussion' group and occasionally directing a muttered comment their way.

Tommy soon reached O'Neill's end of the bar. His plate and empty glass were swept away efficiently and the bar swiped clean with a rag. He took way O'Neill's empty chip bowl and began to fill it. "So, mon, ya wantin' another round?"

"Sure. Why not?" _Why not, indeed. It wasn't like he had anything better to do._

Tommy slid the chip bowl back at him. A glass was set under the tap. "Ya stayin' for the show, den, mon?"

"Show?" O'Neill questioned casually, stuffing a fresh chip in his mouth. _Could a bad cover band really be called a show?_

"Ya, mon." The big man glanced up at the clock over the bar which showed a few minutes to nine o'clock. O'Neill's glass followed the chip bowl. "Anna, she be startin' any time now. Ah, she got da voice of a nightingale, an da face of an angel, dat one. I t'ink you gonna be pleased, mon." Tommy left to answer a hail from down the bar.

O'Neill took a sip from his glass and pondered whether or not he really wanted to stay. _Anna_probably had a voice like a screech owl and the face of a homely horse. He was feeling pretty good after three beers and a good meal and didn't want to spoil his mellow. The Getaway might not be a dive, but it had worked, none the less, in lifting his paperwork mood.

While he was thinking about leaving, the lights came up on the little stage and the musicians, piano, bass, and guitar, sat down and tuned briefly. When the singer came out, he re-thought his position on going home.

She worked her way through the tables nearest the stage, greeting several people that she obviously knew. O'Neill sat back in his stool and watched one of the most gorgeous women he'd seen take up her place on stage.

She was tall, with long, gypsy-dark hair that lit up with fire under the lights. He wasn't close enough to tell the color of her eyes, even though they were enormous. Straight nose and a wide, generous mouth topped a curvy body covered by a clingy black dress. The trio started to play some bouncy Latin tune, she smiled a heart-stopping smile at the short burst of applause.

Jazz wasn't really his thing. It was okay, he supposed. At least, he didn't have anything against it, though it was usually classical music or opera that he put on at home. Yet when she started singing he decided he could become a fan.

"Night and day, you are the one. Only you beneath the moon, and under the sun." She had a voice like whiskey and moonlight. Dreamy, yet perfectly clear. A style that made him think she might be singing only to him. Even the bikers stopped playing pool and leaned on their cue sticks, listening raptly.

The applause at the end of the song had him shaking himself out of her spell. He took a gulp of beer when he found his mouth was bone dry. _Okay, that was quite enough of that. _As her set went on he tried to listen more critically, but he kept finding himself staring with his mouth hanging open.

At the end of an hour, she announced a fifteen-minute set break, and left the stage. Not to retreat to her dressing room, but to make her way through the crowd towards his end of the bar.

He felt a jump of anticipation and unfamiliar nervousness in the pit of his stomach. _Stupid, O'Neill! She's not coming to talk to you!_ The voice in his head berated him. She did direct an impersonal, excuse-me smile his way as she stepped up to the bar next to him. He froze solid.

"What do you think, Tommy?" She hailed the bartender, who grinned at her as he filled a glass with water.

"Hey, girl. You really cookin' tonight!" Tommy handed her her water and she downed half in a single drink. Tommy refilled it automatically.

"Thanks." She turned so her back was to O'Neill and she could survey the room. He gulped reflexively when he saw how far down her dress dipped. "It's a good crowd tonight."

"Dey come ta see you, girl. You jes' keep it up." Tommy wiped the bar with his rag as she saluted him with her water glass. The bartender moved off and Anna reversed her turn, sweeping a mildly curious glance over O'Neill as she returned to the stage. He gulped again when he was sure she was out of earshot, and found he could move.

_Get a grip, Jack! _It was a good thing she hadn't spoken to him. He would have babbled like a teenager. _How pathetic was that? _

It was bad enough he hadn't had a date, let alone sex, in - a long, _long_ time - but the first beautiful woman out of an Air Force uniform he laid eyes on had his glands working overtime. It was worse than pathetic. It was - _humiliating_.

With a self-deprecating sigh he signaled for his check and got the heck out of Dodge. But Anna stayed on his mind. Through the night in incredibly erotic dreams, and the next day at the Base.

Even _paperwork_ didn't drive her out completely. The de-briefings of SG-6 and SG-3 occupied him for a short time, but he all-too-soon found himself sitting in his truck, preparing to drive home for the day.

_Home. Tonight he was going home_. He'd catch up on those episodes of The Simpsons he'd taped while on SG-1's last mission. He'd put on his most disreputable - and therefore, most comfortable - pair of sweats, nuke a frozen dinner and set up in front of the TV and zone out. _Yeah. That was the plan._

Twenty minutes later, he found himself parking in The Getaway's lot. _Just a beer and dinner. That was all. He just wanted to try their Jamaican Pork Sandwich and coleslaw. He wouldn't even stay until nine o'clock. Yes, he'd be _damn_ sure to be out of there before nine._

Yet when the lights came up on the stage he was still at the bar, a fresh beer dripping condensation onto the lacquered wood. It wouldn't be the same tonight, he was sure. Maybe it wouldn't even be her. But, of course, it was.

When she came to the bar for her water at the set break, he managed a smile in return. He'd found out from Tommy that her name was Anna Jordan, and she had a standing gig at The Getaway four nights a week. He now knew she'd been singing there with her trio for a year or so. She'd shown up on Tommy's doorstep one day out of the blue, with a demo CD, and asked him if he'd like to increase his client base.

Tommy had told him, in his own inimitable fashion, that many nights now - especially those nights Anna performed - were often standing room only. She'd been an economic boom in a few short weeks, and Tommy was ecstatic.

O'Neill left again after the first set, unconsciously humming a tune from her performance. He refused to feel embarrassed the next day when he caught Davis staring at him in amazement.

_Okay, so he was humming! A guy had a perfectly good right to hum whenever he wanted, didn't he?_

He had no idea that Davis was amazed because the Colonel had just finished all the quarterly reports two days early. Without busting any innocent SF's down to privates for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the Colonel had told him to 'Have a nice day' when his temperamental, temporary commander had left for the day. _Weird_. Totally.

This time O'Neill didn't even try to rationalize why he ended up at The Getaway. Tommy had his beer on the bar before he eased onto his usual stool. The pulled-beef burritos were as good as everything else he'd eaten. He thought it might be a good idea to take an extra turn in the gym the next day. Too bad Teal'c was off-world. A good sparring match with his muscular friend was guaranteed to work up a sweat and work off the pounds.

He listened and watched Anna's first set with more attention. He'd heard three hours of music from her and didn't think there had been a single repeat to any of her songs. She didn't use music and O'Neill wondered how many she knew. People who performed for a living might as well be aliens, as far as he was concerned. _Why would any rational person want to get up in front of a group of strangers and do - anything?_

She came for her usual glass of water. She wore a long black skirt tonight with a white cropped top that exposed an interesting expanse of midriff. Emeralds sparkled at her ears, throat and wrists. O'Neill was aware she was looking him over with a measuring gaze. Taking a deep breath, he met her eyes.

Green. They were as green as the jewels she wore.

She had nerve, he had to give her that. She didn't flinch, but gave him a half-smile and a raised eyebrow. Taking another sip from her glass, she spoke to him. "So. Tommy says you've been asking about me."   
"Just curious." He was glad he could answer her sounding relatively normal. "Didn't mean to offend you."

She smiled a whole smile at him. He blinked at having the full wattage turned on him for the first time. "I'm not. As long as you're not going to serve me papers or slap a pair of handcuffs on me."

He thought a pair of cuffs might be interesting, but not until they knew each other better. "Hadn't crossed my mind."

She seemed amused, as if at some inner joke. "You're new here."

"Just got lucky, I guess." _Jeezus, Jack. Say something_. "Umm... The food's really good." _Oh, that was intelligent!_

"Hmm." She appeared to agree. "Tommy's wife, Belle, does the cooking."

"His wife?" Typical Mutt-n-Jeff relationship apparently. The woman he thought was the cook was more petite than Carter, with a voice that would have done a drill Sargent credit when she called out ready orders.

"Um-hm." Anna responded to her name being called from the stage by her piano player with a casual wave. "Well, back to the salt mines."

"Yeah. Uh... Break a leg." She gave him a final smile and moved off. He gave himself a mental kick in the pants. "Uh... Look." He called after her. "Can I buy you a drink or something?"

She paused, looking back at him with another serious appraisal and a private smile. "Maybe, Flyboy. If you're still here when I'm done working."

He nodded. "I'll be here."

She returned his nod and went back to the stage. Tommy exchanged his empty beer glass for a full one without asking. Jack interpreted the bartender's glare as a warning. "All dis time she bin here an' no body ever allowed ta buy her nuttin', mon."

"It's just a drink." _Sheesh, it wasn't like it was any big deal_, he thought. His track record with relationships wasn't that stellar. Most likely she'd be kind and let him buy her a drink before never speaking to him again.

It was midnight when her final song was sung. She stayed on stage while members of the audience came by to chat with her. Then she talked briefly with her back-up musicians while they packed up their instruments. By the time she slid onto the stool next to him, most of the crowd had cleared out. There was nobody left at the bar, and only two couples at the tables below.

Tommy stood nearby, ostensibly drying glasses. However, Jack observed him dry the same one three times in a row before Anna had leaned back and kicked off her shoes with a sigh. "Whatchu want, girl." He asked almost belligerently.

"Jamison's. A double." She answered unperturbed by Tommy's attitude. Jack raised two fingers to indicate he'd take that as well. She gave him that measuring look again and he wanted to squirm in his seat. "So what's a nice Flyboy like you doing in a place like this?"

"Why Flyboy?" He countered. Tommy banged their two shot glasses down in front of them and remained there, arms crossed as if daring one of them to tell him to leave.

Anna picked hers up and held it under her nose, sniffing the bouquet like the whiskey was fine wine. "A good Irish whiskey should smell like Ireland, don't you think? Kind of peaty and green?" She sipped and savored before swallowing.

"Don't you think this conversation would get a lot farther if we both did something other than ask questions?" Her laughter sounded exactly like the whiskey tasted on his tongue, smokey and mellow. Of course, it was the whiskey that made his stomach jerk like that and not her laugh.

"All right. Flyboy. Tommy says Marines. I say Air Force. So who wins the twenty bucks?" She seemed at ease and Jack hoped she was. This was as much success as he'd had with a woman lately.

"Why do I have to be in the military?" She wrinkled her nose and glanced up. "It's the haircut, isn't it?" She nodded with a chuckle, taking another sip from her glass. "You win. Air Force. Colonel Jack O'Neill, ma'am. That's O'Neill, with two L's. There's another Jack O'Neil with only one L. He has no sense of humor."

She held out a hand to Tommy, who went to the till and got out a bill, slapping it on her palm disgustedly. "I never win dis bet, mon. Girl's always right." He left to help his wife at her call from the kitchen.

The other two couples had departed and the waitress, Kelli, moved quietly below cleaning up, Jack and Anna were effectively left alone. "Call me Anna. You didn't answer me." She continued at his questioning look. "How'd you end up in The Getaway, Colonel? We don't get many from Cheyenne Mountain."

"Like I said, I was just driving around and made a lucky guess. I was actually looking for a dive."

She seemed to appreciate the necessity. "A few months ago, this place would have been right up your alley. Tommy's made quite a few changes recently." She pointed out the remodeling that had added the stage and the deck off the back of the bar.

"He gives you all the credit for that."

Anna shrugged, uncomfortable for the first time. "I helped a little."

"So what are you doing here?" It was her turn to not understand the question. He'd thought about this a lot the past two days. "Look. You're way too talented to be singing in some former dive in Colorado. You should be... I don't know, in New York or someplace where more people hear you. You obviously don't need the money." He indicated the shining gems that dripped from her ears and throat. _If they weren't real emeralds, he'd eat them. _"That means you've chosen to be here. Only two reasons I can think of for that - are you running or hiding?"

He didn't think she was going to answer. He'd been outrageous and knew it, and he waited for her to toss the rest of her whiskey in his face and storm off. Instead, she sipped thoughtfully before setting her glass down precisely on the wet ring on the bar. "You're very clever, Colonel."

"It's Jack." He answered, taking a gulp from his glass that made his eyes water.

She bit her lip and ran a finger around the rim of her glass. "Let's just say I had a bit of family trouble." Her eyes, _green as glass they were_, flickered to his and away. "Whether I left, or whether they kicked me out depends on which side of the door you're on. New York is the one place I do not want to be."

He opened his mouth to pry further but was stopped by something in those green eyes. Sadness? Regret? He wasn't sure, only that the look was entirely familiar to someone who had seen it in his own mirror more times than he could count. He took another bracing gulp of Jamison's.

"What about you, Colonel? Jack." She corrected herself before he could, having recovered quickly. "Any family in the area?"

"An ex-wife, otherwise no. My folks passed on years ago." He'd been two days shy of thirty and on a covert mission in the Philippine jungle when a car crash had taken them both. His then-wife Sara had arranged everything. He'd missed the funeral by three weeks.

"I'm sorry."

He shrugged a shoulder. "Don't be. It was a long time ago." And a more recent death had hurt him more. _Oh, God, Charlie... _The pain came in a wave that flowed in a well-worn path. No parent should have to outlive their child. He tossed back the whiskey that remained in his glass and hissed at the burn.

"Well, aren't we a happy pair?" Anna followed suit with her drink. Her dark-fire hair jumped around her shoulders as she shook off the whiskey punch. "What else shall we talk about? The death penalty? Acid rain?"

They talked, about quite a few things. They laughed about a few things more. Yet Jack found he was dissatisfied. She was very adept at talking and saying very little. She seemed to consider every word, checking every phrase before it was said to make sure it was only what she wanted to say. He'd actually found out more about _her_ from Tommy.

He'd been doing top-secret, classified missions for so long it was a reflex for him to dodge personal questions about himself, and was as guilty of keeping himself from Anna as she was from him.

Tommy came out of the kitchen at one a.m. and interrupted their laughter. "Hey girl, we gonna close now. You be careful walkin' home." He started putting chairs up on tables with a lot of clattering.

"You walk home every night?" Though Jack tried to be a civilized man, he couldn't help feeling protective about women. Carter had nearly elbowed him in the teeth the last time he'd opened the door for her.

"Um-hm." She fumbled for her shoes on the floor. When she looked up and saw his concern, she continued. "It's not far. It's one of the reasons I've chosen to sing here, as a matter of fact."

Standing, he tossed down some bills on the bar. "I'll give you a ride, then."

"Not tonight, I think." She held up a hand to stall his insistence. "I'll be fine. And I need the walk after the whiskey. By the way, thanks for the drink." She gave him one of those squirm-inducing looks he was becoming familiar with. "Next time you feel like buying me one, let me know. See you."

"Okay. Yeah. Sure. Uh... See you." She was already half-way back to the stage, and with a wave goodbye to Tommy, she disappeared behind the black curtain. He felt like high-fiving someone. She sounded like she wanted to see him again.

_What was wrong with her?_

He returned Tommy's farewell, making his way to his truck, now the lone vehicle in the lot. Maybe it was the double shot of whiskey that was fuzzing his brain, though it usually took at least a bottle before he felt this foggy.

_She wanted to see him again!_

When Anna came around from the back and crossed the street he thought briefly about following her home, then decided it was too stalker-ish. _She said she'd be fine. Go home_.

_Okay, okay_.

He went home, but he didn't end up sleeping much that night.

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The next day seemed to whiz by.

No more paperwork, for one thing. He gave a pilot's briefing on the new X-302. Had a radio conference with Major Brown updating his diplomatic mission. Spent two productive hours beating up - make that, sparring with - unsuspecting SF's in the gym.

He managed to keep his temper when Colonel Chekov, the Russian liason, made another stab at demanding that a Russian soldier be attached to SG-1. He was particularly proud of the fact that he only called Chekov an idiot once during the entire discussion.

He was starved and in an extremely good mood when Tommy hailed him in the doorway that night. A beer and two fish tacos later, he was still flying high.

"Ya know, don'tcha Jack-o mon, dat tonight's Anna's night off?" Tommy sported a sly grin as he pulled Jack another beer.

"Her night off?" He'd never even considered that she wouldn't be there. His mood dropped into his boots. "Well, uh... Yeah, sure I knew it." He tried to recover under the big man's laughing gaze. "I'm just getting addicted to your wife's cooking, that's all."

"Ya, mon. I be sure to tell 'er." Tommy laughed openly as he went to take a newcomer's order.

_Crap. What day was today, anyway? _Working underground, and on his screwy schedule, tended to confuse him about which day of the week it was.

The same two old men who'd occupied the bar stools next to him every night helped him out by cheering at the baseball game on the TV over the bar. As he watched, the network logo came on the screen advertising Sunday Night Baseball, fading into an athlete's foot remedy commercial.

Sunday night. Anna sang at The Getaway four nights a week. Which were probably not Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. _Crap_.

Knowing he couldn't very well leave after telling that whopper lie, Jack resigned himself to spending another hour with his beer before he could make a graceful exit. During that time, he let himself relax, watch the game, and get drawn into the old-timer's on-going argument about the Rockies.

By the time Tommy asked him about another round, the hour and more had passed. Jack left feeling only a little foolish.

He told himself he wouldn't go back the next night. Anna wouldn't be there. There wasn't any reason he shouldn't go home. Yet he found himself, on his usual stool, eating a plateful of Belle's Jerked Chicken, and suffering under Tommy's amused grins.

Tuesday night - he was forcing himself to keep track - he deliberately went to O'Malley's. And found himself somehow dissatisfied with a place he'd always found perfectly acceptable.

O'Malley's was a - young - place. Lots of yuppies, lots of Base personnel, families with kids. Loud pop music over the din. Bright lights and blaring sports programs. Service was slow, and to top it off, his steak was over-cooked and his beer was warm.

He went to work with a sense of relief Wednesday. Not only was Hammond due back in only one day, but his team would start to reassemble. His life would get back on even keel. Back to normal. No more time for The Getaway. No more room for beautiful, green-eyed mystery women.

Teal'c arrived through the Stargate in early afternoon, fired up from his and Bra'tac's successes in recruiting rebellious Jaffa.

It always made the Colonel look twice when Teal'c wore his "native clothes." The enveloping robes made Teal'c seem even more alien than the symbiote he had carried in his gut.

Jack spent an enjoyable afternoon listening to Teal'c's adventures and watching him get the obligatory once-over from the medical staff. Not that Teal'c ever got sick. Junior had seen to that. It was the one thing for which Jack had to be grateful to a Goa'uld. Now, the tretonin Teal'c took every day as a substitute for the symbiote seemed to be as effective.

Teal'c's newly acquired need for sleep coincided with Jack's desire to leave the Base. He didn't want to invite Teal'c to accompany him, and didn't want to examine why too closely, so he dealt with it the way he dealt best with things like that - he ignored the subject.

A glance at his watch told him he was later than usual. Anna would have already started. He jumped into his truck with more enthusiasm than he'd had in weeks.

_Getaway, here I come!_

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He wasn't here.

Anna stopped herself from scanning the crowd yet again. He was not here tonight. His usual bar stool was empty. He wasn't at any of the tables. Not here. Not tonight.

_Well, then. Good. That was just fine_. The one thing she didn't need at the moment was a man like Jack O'Neill. Any man, but especially Jack O'Neill. He had complications written all over him. She didn't need - or want - complications in her life.

He was in the military, a career man in an organization whose goals were diametrically opposed to the way she was raised and what she believed. He was secretive about what he did and who he worked for. He was opinionated, sarcastic, and conservative with a healthy dose of chauvinism added in the mix. _Complicated_.

Anna let the song she was singing roll through her without really thinking about it. She wasn't giving her best tonight. She knew it. Her musicians knew it. And it was all his fault.

_Where was he?_

She didn't care. _Really_. She'd only spoken to him that one time, that one drink, an impulse on her part. Because she was trying to learn to follow her impulses, she hadn't taken a day - or two - to mull it over, meditate on the possible outcomes, practice possible dialogue scenarios. _Goddess, she was pathetic. _

It didn't matter that he didn't want to follow up on her carefully casual invitation to do it again. She didn't want to anyway. _Did she?_ Besides, she had no way of knowing how to deal with an audacious Air Force colonel. Nothing in her former or current life would help her cope with this impatient, restless man who always played the game his own way. And she didn't know the rules in the first place.

_There was just something about him. _Anna could picture in her mind the way he watched her, and firmly refused to acknowledge any panic caused by his dark, intense eyes. It was like she was the only thing he was concentrating on. And when she'd finally worked up her nerve to speak to him, she found he had a sense of humor, an intelligence she appreciated, and an inner sadness that touched her.

She hoped she was mature enough that she wasn't influenced - too much, at any rate - by how physically attractive she found him. Strong, tall, and handsome, with an engaging grin and guarded eyes. His hands - _why did she always notice a man's hands?_ - square-palmed, long-fingered, just beginning to be touched by the age that was sitting so well on his lined face.

He would have to be one of those men that became more attractive as they aged. And he'd started out looking pretty good.

_Damn him, anyway._

She missed her entrance cue for the next song and had to endure an exasperated and disgusted look from her piano player as he repeated the intro. _Come on, Anna. Pull yourself together_.

She almost missed her cue again when she looked up and saw him stride into the bar. Stifling the jump of pleasure, she sleep-walked her way through the song, watching his every move.

He returned Tommy's wave, tossing his black leather coat on the back of his bar stool. The two old regulars next to him - Joe and Walter, though Anna had yet to sort out which was which - must have made a comment because he laughed and said something funny back. He parked his -_very nice_ - butt onto the stool and picked up the beer Tommy set in front of him. And he turned to look at her.

She knew - precisely - the second he focused on her. It was an awareness that ran down her spine to quiver in the pit of her stomach. She wasn't prone to stage fright, but she was sure that she now understood it. And she knew - exactly - what he was looking for.

Stalling for time between songs, Anna reached for the glass of water at her feet and slowly drank. If she acknowledged him, if she said yes to the unspoken question he was asking, she was opening herself to all those things she'd just told herself she didn't - couldn't - want.

_But wouldn't she be missing all the things she did? _Wasn't that why she'd left her home, her family, in the first place? Because they only wanted her to do what they told her to do. What was_right_. What was _safe_. What was _necessary_.

Because she wanted to live her own life, take her own risks. Find out what it meant to be _Anna_. Who that person was, and if she even liked her?

She'd learned so much since that day so many years ago when she'd left New York. About herself, about living. She hadn't believed how long she'd let them keep her - _captive_. And now.... If she didn't take this chance....

Taking a calming breath, Anna set down her glass and straightened, meeting his gaze across the crowded bar. Her nod and slight smile seemed to be what he was waiting for. He raised his glass in her direction and swivelled his bar stool around to attack the plate of food Tommy had just set there.

_Well. That was that_. She hoped she'd made the right choice. She hoped she could live with what came next. Because Jack O'Neill wasn't the only one with secrets.

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So she stayed that night and let him buy her another drink. And the next night. And the next. Tommy acting as chaperone and bartender. Neither Jack or Anna was aware how much they were learning about the other through their casual conversation, heated discussions, and sarcastic remarks.

Jack discovered that much of what he'd thought of as secretiveness was Anna's lack of self-confidence. She was so self-assured and professional when she performed that it seemed absurd that she wouldn't be that way in dealing with people. Him, in particular. He was so - _harmless_.

She was still very close-mouthed about herself. Jack found he learned more from what she didn't say, than by what she did.

She didn't like to be touched. She didn't shake hands, she avoided friendly hugs.  She was warm and vivacious. She was reserved and shy. She could match him drink for drink yet more often than not chose club soda. She loved jewelry. And clothes. But hated shopping. She ate like a logger, but never gained an ounce that he could tell.

She had one of those photographic memories and remembered even the smallest details of things she read and seen. Her repertoire included not only jazz standards, but pop tunes, rock and roll, even some of his classical favorites. She not only sang, she also played piano, and she said she played the harp.

And Jack discovered one other very important fact as he watched her finish up her last set Saturday night: _He could, if he let himself, very easily fall for this woman._

As if in response to that thought, the skies overhead, which had been cloudy and threatening all day, boomed a loud clap of thunder. Jagged lightening flashed across the windows of the bar, and the rain started. Not in some little pitter-patter, but a gully-washing torrent.

The room cleared as the crowd swept out the doors with shouts of dismay and astonishment when they became instantly drenched. Jack watched them scurry across the parking lot in the intermittent light with mild contempt. _It was just a little rain, after all._ It wasn't even cold.

Anna seemed to take her audience's desertion in stride. Instead of coming to sit next to him, she went to one of the windows and looked out, watching the thunderstorm sweep across the city. Jack took his beer to stand next to her.

She was hugging herself, her arms wrapped around her, smiling in appreciation. "Isn't it wonderful?" She said to him with child-like simplicity.

"Yeah, it's a pretty good one." He took a thoughtful drink. "Hope the lightening doesn't start too many forest fires."

"Rain falls. Lightening strikes. Fires burn. It's all a part of the cycle, Jack." She had a way of speaking sometimes that reminded him of Daniel's friend Oma Desala. He didn't understand either of them. "I'm going to get soaked tonight, I think."

"No, you're not." On this he was clear. There was independent, and then there was stupid. "You're not walking home in this." As if to emphasize his point, a huge fork of lightening jabbed the dark overhead, followed by the loudest thunder boomer they'd heard.

"The lightening doesn't scare me and I don't mind getting wet." She challenged.

"I do." He up-ended his glass and drained that last of his beer. The empty made a sharp sound as he set the glass down on a near-by table. "I'm giving you a ride home tonight."

"Jack...."

"Anna." He mimicked. "I'll get my truck."

"I can walk across the parking lot." She hefted her bag onto her shoulder and made for the door.

"No." When she opened her mouth to protest he put up a hand to wave off her objections. "Ah. Ah, ah, ah." She was angry. Her eyes were glinting and the muscles in her jaw twitched as she bit down on what he was sure was a good cussing out. _God, she was beautiful. _He pointed at the floor. "No. Stay here." She crossed her arms, looking mutinous. He met her furious gaze calmly and pointed down again. "Stay."

They glared at each other in a furious battle as he slipped on his jacket, even brown to cutting green. He pulled up the windbreaker's hood and strode out the door into the storm.

_Okay, add arrogant and stubborn to the list of Jack O'Neill's complications. _Though she admired the way he walked unperturbed through nature's fury. His long strides were confident and purely masculine, eating up the ground. Even as she cursed his pigheadedness, she had to admit he was a pleasure to watch.

When his truck pulled up in front of the door, she ran out and jumped in, settling herself huffily into her seat and glaring at him again. To her added irritation, he just smiled and put the truck in gear, easing out to the street. "Which way?"

Anna's directions were terse over the rain's roar. The more she pouted, the more Jack liked it, which made her pout even more. The lightening was moving off though the rain still fell in sheets when she had him pull over outside a large Victorian on a corner lot about 15 blocks from The Getaway. A light shone through the gloom illuminating the wrap-around porch, spilling faintly into the cab of the truck.

Grabbing up her bag she made to get out. "Thanks for the ride." Though it didn't sound much like a thank you.

"Hey, wait a minute." He stopped her with a hand on the strap of her shoulder bag. He was very careful not to touch her. "We, uh... didn't get much of a chance to talk before we left."

"Oh, really?"

_Damn, she was still mad. _"Yeah. I, um... Well... I..." He scratched a hand through his wet hair and risked a look at her.

"That certainly was an interesting discussion. We'll have to do it again sometime."

_Oh, she had the sarcasm thing down, all right. _She made a grab at the door handle. He engaged the automatic locks. "Anna."

"Jack, let me out of here right now or I'll..."

"Just wait, okay? I'm not too great at this." Now he rubbed at the back of his neck, aware that she had subsided to watch him warily. "I just wanted to tell you..."

He didn't even know if he _should_ tell her. But it was time for him to get back to work. Hammond had taken back the reins of the SGC, and the extra four days he'd given Jack as a bonus were up. His team had re-grouped and was on the rotation to start routine re-cons tomorrow.

"What?" She asked, still short with him, but he knew she was curious now. Too curious to let him get out of this.

"Look. I'm..." _Oh, for cryin' out loud, Jack. _"I'm going to be... Out of town... For a week or so. On business."

"Business. You mean deep space radar telemetry business?"

_She hadn't believed their cover story either. They really needed to work on that_. "Yeah. Deep space radar telemetry." He answered, looking her in the eye with a straight face. "I, ah, just wanted to tell you, you know, 'cause I'm not going to be around for a few days and I won't be at the Getaway and I'll be gone and..." He trailed off, wincing at his own juvenile stupidity.

"You just wanted to let me know." It seemed she'd lost her mad. Jack shrugged in response and she gave him one of those long, squirmy looks. In the end she seemed to come to a decision. "Thank you for telling me. I would have worried."

"About where I was?" _Woo hoo! Yes!_

"Yes. But also..." And now it was her turn to be uncomfortable. To look away.

"Also?" He prompted. The rain was still beating down, isolating them in the truck cabin. She shrugged and he clearly heard her swallow.

"Also... I would have wondered if I'd... Done something wrong." She didn't look at him. Couldn't. _Damn, she hated being so insecure about how to act with people._ Okay, that was enough of making a fool of herself tonight. "Thanks for the ride, Jack. Can I get out now, please?"

He sighed a quiet laugh at both of them, looked at her with a half-smile. "Not quite." He reached out to her, stopping short of skimming his fingertips across her slanting cheekbone. Her eyes widened, he didn't know if it was with fear or not. "Anna." He thought he felt his fingers tingle. "I don't know exactly when, but I _will_ be back. Okay?"

She smiled at him. Not her full-wattage performing smile, not her let's-be-friends smile, not the one that laughed at him, but a sweet, shy one that he hadn't seen before. It felt like a gift. "Okay."

He broke the humming contact by snicking the door locks open. "Get inside now."

She nodded and pulled at the handle, but turned back to him before climbing out. "Jack. Be careful. Please." She said to him seriously.

"Always." He nodded towards her front door. "Go on."

She slammed the door and made a run through the rain up the walkway and steps to the cover of the porch. He watched her fumble for a minute for her keys and then the door swung open. She stepped through and hesitantly turned back, waved, shut the door behind her.

He smiled into the darkness as he gunned away from the curb.   
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	2. Transpositions Changes in the Key of Li...

It was 11:15pm a full week later. Anna talked quietly with Walter, her piano player, about the songs for the next set. Lee, her guitarist, picked out a baroque tune next to her. The bass player, Bill, waited as he always did, patiently.

They were an eclectic group of players she'd picked up when she got here. The friend of a friend who knew somebody who'd heard of someone who played a little piano. A studio guitarist-slash-pick-up player looking for a steady gig. A bassist who moonlighted as a pediatrician. They'd found her, or she'd found them, and she didn't question fate in these matters.

"Thank the Lord and pass the ammunition!" Walter exclaimed as he looked over her shoulder at the audience. "He's back, fellas!"

Lee added a flourish to the fanfare he strummed. He hardly said a word unless it was with his guitar. Bill grinned and said, "Finally!"

"Who's back?" She turned and saw him. He'd already made it to his usual stool, returning greetings from Tommy and the baseball boys. He directed her a casual toast with his beer glass and a look that was anything but. He waited for her wave in return before turning back to talk to Tommy.

"Aren't you going to go and say hello?" Walter questioned her, when she tried to continue their conversation.

"Should I?" She didn't really know how these kinds of things were done. She did know she felt a huge surge of relief and pure happiness on seeing him again. Perversely, it made her angry with herself. Just as the worrying she couldn't help doing had made her angry. Just as the loneliness she'd experienced these last seven days made her angry.

"Honey, you been singing the blues so often this week I'm about to go into therapy." Bill shrugged. "Any man that can make you that unhappy better at least get a hello when he comes back." Lee added a sniggering little run on the strings that had her raising her eyebrow at him.

"Has it really been that bad?" She asked quietly, looking at Jack sideways across the room, because she didn't want him to know she was looking at all.

"Just go tell him you're glad he's back so we can do some happy tunes." Walter urged her, uncharacteristically taking her arm and pushing her off the stage towards the bar.

Jack smelled her before he saw her. _Funny_, he wouldn't have said he'd known what she smelled like, but he did. Something floral and sexy and clean. Exactly the opposite from what he'd been smelling the last few days. _Why did the Ancients have to put that last Stargate in a swamp?_

She stepped up beside him and leaned an arm on the bar in an attempt at a casualness she didn't feel. "My boys want me to tell you they're glad you're back." She tapped her empty glass for Tommy to re-fill.

"Your boys, huh." He turned and saw the three of them watching and chuckling, he saluted them as well and heard a laughing riff from the guitar.

"Um-hm. Apparently I've been singing the blues more than usual this week. So they're glad you're back." She picked up the glass of water Tommy had filled for her and turned to go.

He let her get a few steps away before he called after her. "Hey, does that mean you missed me?" It was that squirmy look and the laughing smile at the same time, before she continued on.

"Hey, Flyboy!" The piano player said into the mike from the stage. "Somethin' special you wanna hear?"

_Well, how perfect was that? There was only one song after all._ "Somewhere over the Rainbow." He called out. After a nod from Anna, Walter began to noodle out the intro.

_"When all the world is a helpless jumble, And the raindrops tumble all around, _

_Heaven opens a magic door. _

_When all the clouds darken up the skyway There's a rainbow highway to be found, _

_Leading from your window pane,_

_To a place behind the sun, Just a step beyond the rain."_  
_That last part wasn't right_, Jack thought as Anna continued the song. It rained on them more often than not on away missions. Like this last one. Not only was the Stargate in the middle of a swamp - though Daniel and Carter were both sure it hadn't been a swamp originally - it had alternated between pouring rain and blinding sun. His sunburn had mold growing on it.

_"Some where over the rainbow way up high, there's a land that I've heard of once in a lullaby."_

She was good. He gave her that. Not Garland - _who was?_ - but she gave the song a style all her own. It was wistful, a song about hopes and dreams, eerily reminiscent of going through the Stargate. Maybe that was why it seemed to be his theme song most of the time.

_"Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, _

_And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true._

_Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. _

_Where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops,_

_That's where you'll find me."_

Her singing was fulfilling a promise to herself, he knew. Just from their minimal discussions he'd gathered a bit about her upbringing. More like a pampered poodle than a live human being - nannies and private tutors, chauffeurs, etiquette training - _Gawd_! - no friends, no unsupervised activities, no T.V., and the ultimate sin as far as he was concerned - no pets. Maybe this was her theme song, too.

_"Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly._

_Birds fly over the rainbow, why, then oh, why can't I?_

_If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh why, can't I?"  
_

When the song ended he applauded enthusiastically. She went on with her set and it seemed no time at all before she was through singing for the night.

She walked toward him through the empty tables, drinking in the sight of him, dismayed that she hadn't really _seen_ him before. Dark circles bruised under his eyes, and the little glint wasn't in his face. His green military issue only accented how pale he was. His fatigue dragged at her as she got closer. "Jack," she asked, "When was the last time you slept?"

He winced. "That bad, huh?" She wiggled her hand back and forth to indicate the probability was high. "I came here straight from the base."

"I'm flattered. I think. But I'd like it better if you took me home and then went straight to bed."

"Yours?" _Oh, Jesus. Why had he said that?_

"Well." She paused to collect herself. "I'd be even more flattered if you didn't look so terrible." And if her stomach hadn't just started acting like she'd eaten a whole can of Mexican jumping beans. "Come on, Flyboy. Take me home while you're still awake enough to drive."

She let him carry her heavy bag of music out to his truck only because he insisted. It was quiet in the cab as he negotiated the blocks to her house. He didn't say anything because he didn't know where to start. She was silent because she couldn't find anything to say that didn't sound pathetic.

He pulled up and parked thinking about the last time he'd dropped her off. There was no rain, and a half-full moon shone down through the brightly twinkling stars.  
  
_And he wasn't going to make a fool of himself tonight._

"Thanks, Jack. Drive safely going home, okay? See you." She dragged her bag onto her shoulder and jumped down, slamming the door shut behind her.

"Yeah. Sure." _Damn, she'd caught him off-guard. _He was more tired than he thought. "Anna, wait." He followed after her up the flower-lined walk from the street to her porch. "You never said if you missed me or not."

She froze, a hand on the rail, a foot on the bottom step. She didn't look at him. "I missed you, Jack." Was her low response. "More than I thought I would. More than I wanted to. I tried not to, but it didn't seem to matter. I _missed_ you anyway." The hand on the baluster closed into a fist as she hissed the last phrase straight ahead.

"You don't sound too happy with that." Jack shoved his hands into his pockets.

"I'm not." _Why wouldn't she look at him? _Her gesture chopped at the house in front of her. Her voice grew more and more heated. "I have a home I love, a job I like doing, good friends to do it with. I didn't think I needed anything else." She heaved her shoulder bag onto the porch from where she stood and rounded on him, accusing. "I didn't _want_ to need anything else."

Perversely, this evidence of her anger made him feel better. "At least I know I'm not alone." _There. That backed her up a little_. "I thought about you. Too much. Too often. You got in the way." _Thank God it had been routine site-checks and not an encounter with the Goa'uld. _"It's been a long time since a woman's been on my mind like you. And I don't like it either."

She sat abruptly on the bottom step, head in her hands, and took a deep, calming breath. She was furious that it had come out like that, that it had been there to come out in the first place. "So what do we do now?"

Considering, Jack eased down on the step next to her. "Seems to me we've got two choices."

"Only two?" With the absurdity of her situation seeping through her irritation, her temper drained as quickly as it flared.

"Two main ones. The rest sort of follow from there."

"Two choices, then. And they are?"

"Well, choice number one is pretty simple. We don't like it, we just stop seeing each other. I'll stop coming to The Getaway. You go on singing. We both get back to the life we had before."

Anna shook her head, clearly not satisfied. "I don't think I like choice number one so much. What's number two?"

He grinned at her. "Yeah. I don't like it either. Especially since I like Belle's cooking." She wrinkled her nose at him in exasperation. "Choice number two is harder. We keep seeing each other. We find out if we want to go on seeing each other."

She cocked her head to the side and studied him. It was a posture he was familiar with, like she was looking for something and not finding it. "How do we do that?"

"I think we should try something different." _Okay, Jack, now or never. _"Look. I've got a debriefing early tomorrow, but I'm free after that. Why don't I come by when I'm done and we'll have lunch or something. Just seeing you when the sun's out has got to be different."

He endured another long look, nerves jumping. Then she smiled. "All right."

"All right what, exactly?" His eyes narrowed, just wanting to make sure.

"All right. Why don't you come over tomorrow and we'll have lunch or something." _God, he loved it when she smiled at him like that._ "During the day."

"All right. Yeah. I've been hearing rumors that you might be a vampire." Her lovely laugh made everything right.

"Well, we can't have that, can we?" Now the laugh was directed at herself, though he had no idea why. "The great Jack O'Neill dating a vampire, how scandalous!"

"Not an actual vampire, anyway. There've been a few that did a good impression." It was Anna's turn not to understand the inside joke. And really, the Goa'uld were more like snakes.

"So, is this our first date?" She asked, standing.

"I guess so. You okay with that?" Jack wasn't even sure if _he_ was okay with it. He stood next to her, palms itching with the need to touch her, knowing that she would have to be the one to do it first.

"Yes, Jack. I'm very okay with that."

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The next morning, Jack stood nervously at Anna's front door, waiting for her to answer his knock. He looked in the window and ran a hand through his hair, knowing that it wouldn't do much good. He needed a haircut. At least he'd made it home to change into civies. Blue shirt, khakis, Nikies. Casual. Relaxed.

He was anything but.

She finally opened the door and Jack had to make a conscious effort not to drool. She wore only a short terry cloth robe that ended about mid-thigh, emphasizing the length of her legs. _God, they went on for miles. _She was rubbing her damp hair with a white towel, clearly just out of the shower.

"Am I early?" He managed as she stepped back to let him enter.

"How can you be early when we didn't set a time?" The sun slanted through the sheer curtains that covered the glass surround and lit up the entry. "I was out gardening. Composting, actually. And chicken manure isn't my favorite perfume for a date."

"Eau de poultry. Definitely an acquired smell." He followed after her when she walked back down hall. The front room, _he supposed in a Victorian it was a parlour_, and the dining room were to his right at the front of the house. A library-slash-music room with a black grand piano and walls of books took up the room on his left. The furnishings fit the lady - an eclectic, artful, elegant mix of antique and contemporary.

"There's fresh coffee in the kitchen." She indicated a pair of swinging panel doors on the other side of the stairs. "Make yourself at home. It'll just take me a minute to get ready." Her bare feet made no sound as she started up. Jack shut his eyes to keep them in his head.

"Don't get dressed on my account." He said, mostly to himself, smiling broadly when she called down, "I heard that!" He pushed through into a modern kitchen. The coffee maker stood on a white tile counter. French doors and large windows showed him a lush back yard beyond the breakfast bar. There was pile of compost with a large bite gone out of the side, testifying to her morning's work.

Opening what seemed to him to be the right cabinet - cherry wood, solid and well-made - he found mugs and poured a cup. At the first sip, he glanced down in surprise. The coffee was good enough that Daniel would have approved.

He wandered around the blue and white kitchen with his cup. Clusters of herbs hung upside down in the window over the sink. And though the counters and appliances were spotless, the air only smelled of - air, he decided. Fresh, and faintly herbal. Kind of like Anna.

Restaurant quality range and ovens, dishwasher, a large refrigerator that was well stocked when he looked inside, all stainless steel. _Great! Maybe she could even cook_.

With that happy thought, he pushed through the other set of doors into the dining room to continue his exploration of the first floor. The rooms were neat without being severely organized, though he found the absence of any dust a bit ominous.

Here and there, sitting casually on gleaming antiques, were clusters of crystals. Some large enough to strain a weight-lifter, others small enough to disappear inside his closed fist. There were clusters that reminded him of wild mountain ranges, and crystals polished to perfect roundness. Some were smoky, some oddly opaque, and some in every color of the rainbow.

He found himself reluctantly drawn by the glitter of them as he wandered around, the way they winked and gleamed in the sunlight.

When Anna came downstairs a few minutes later, she found Jack in her living room and paused a moment just to watch him. It was almost as astonishing for her to see a man in her living room as it was to see he was holding a large cluster of quartz crystals. The cluster was one of her most cherished possessions, having been given to her by her mother, passed down through the generations for several hundred years. She hadn't felt him pick it up.

Wondering why she wasn't fighting the urge to snatch it out of his hands, she entered the room. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah, sure. Any time." He gestured broadly with the rocks in his hands and didn't see Anna swallow and dig her fingers into her palms. "I like your house. You live here all by yourself?"

"Um-hm. I like my space."

"Me, too." He looked down at the crystals. "Um... You're... Ah... not into all that New Age sh- stuff are you?" He changed the word at the last second, in case she was.

"Define 'New Age' and 'into.' " She eased the cluster out of his hands and replaced it on the bookshelf beside him. Good thing it was sunny outside and bright in the room.

"I don't know... You don't align your chakras with Betelgeuse, or fung shway your bathroom, or stuff like that." He indicated the rest of the room.

"Ah. No. I do meditate, and practice yoga and Tai chi." She smiled and looked around with fresh eyes. Her collection probably did look a little strange to someone else. She had no need for props or crutches, but she had a great deal of respect for tradition. "Basically, I just like rocks. I have these things because I think they're pretty and I like looking at them. Not because they serve any purpose for me."

"Not that I'd mind, or anything, if you did, you know. 'Cause I'm pretty open-minded, you know... about stuff. Like that." He winced and tried to recover. "So. Ready to go?"

She accepted his change of subject, but he saw the laughter in her smile. "Have you eaten yet?"

"I don't think a stale donut at 7 a.m. actually counts as eating. I'm starving."

"There a hamburger place, over on Hoover..."

"McMurty's. They've got burgers the size of dinner plates..." He held his hands up outlining a large circle.

"And real ice cream milkshakes. I want strawberry." She opened the door and followed him out.

"I'm driving?" He asked, jingling his keys down the walk.

"You have to since I don't know how." At his astonished look she shrugged. "Chauffeurs."

"Weird." He grinned at her. "I could teach you."

"I'm sure you will, Jack. Absolutely sure."

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Jack didn't want their date to end so soon. Lunch seemed to take next to no time at all. He was elated when she suggested they drive around and see if there was anything to do. Not having any specific plans was fine with him. That way, there wasn't any reason to take her home.

They worked their way through town, not finding anything that interested them enough to stop and get out, until Anna saw a summer carnival set up in the city park. She nearly had her nose pressed to the window in excitement, and when she turned to him, a question in her eyes, Jack laughed and turned on his blinker, checking the traffic before making a slightly illegal turn towards the parking lot.

Jack had a close and personal relationship with his inner child. He knew many people thought it was unnaturally close. But, _darn it_, if something wasn't fun why would anyone want to do it? And being with Anna was certainly fun.

He had to look at things differently when he was around her. She had a child-like curiosity and joy about the simplest things. He couldn't get a grip on the split in her personality. One minute they were talking seriously about revolutionary political philosophy, and the next they were walking along the game aisle at a carnival deciding which prizes were worth playing for.

He was growing to intensely dislike the people who had raised her. When he asked her if she'd ever been to a carnival before, her answer was a telling: "I was taken through Coney Island once."

She had to ride every ride and go through every fun house. He indulged her by throwing baseballs and darts, making baskets with spongy balls, and tossing rings until she had an armload of stuffed animals. She laughed and buried her face in garishly colored fur. And when she saw a group of children from a special needs school, she unselfishly distributed the fruits of his labors among them.

She pointed at the last booth in the row and asked him to win her one more, for the memories, and he couldn't refuse. Fortunately, it was a target shooting game and it took him about a minute to knock down every duck and deer silhouette spinning around the tent's opposite wall.

She took the huge yellow bear and hugged it close. Jack found himself envying the stuffed animal. It was her laughing smile though her eyes were serious. "You're very good at that."

"It's a side benefit." He shrugged. He'd always been a good shot and rarely thought about the skill. "You want to try?" He held out the air rifle towards her.

She shook her head and hugged her bear again. "No thanks. We've done this game, let's find another one." But she was quiet as they walked down the next row.

She decided on tossing ping pong balls for fish in little bowls. She was pretty good and he had to persuade her to stop when she'd won six. They left the bowls of colorful Bettas in a box under the counter to pick up when they went home.

Next they headed for the merchandise booths. Again, she had to stop in every one and look at everything. When they passed a booth selling CD's of early rock-and-roll, she starting singing under her breath.

"I love this song!" She exclaimed to him.

It was an early Beatles tune, one he remembered fondly from high school. "Yeah. You should have heard it when it came out."

She tilted her head to look at him quizzically. "I did."

"No way." _No way_ she was as old - or nearly - as old as he was. "You can't be over thirty!" He was a pretty good judge of people and there was _no way_.

"Hmm. I won't embarrass myself and tell you how old I was, but it was before my mother died and I went to live with the Sullivans." Her expression turned melancholy as she looked back on a memory. "My Mom and I would turn the radio up loud enough to shake the dishes and dance around the kitchen."

"You were nine when she passed away, right?"

"Um-hm." Anna held her yellow bear in front of her by the arms as if to dance with it down the grassy row. "I wasn't allowed to listen to pop music after..." She trailed off and shook her head to expel the sadness. "I persuaded one of the cooks to sneak me a little transistor radio. At night, I'd hide under the covers and listen to the top 10 countdown. At least, until Mrs. Sullivan caught me." Jack watched anger and regret flicker across her expressive face. Yellow Bear got another hug. "Anyway... People always say I look young. I guess I just have good genes."

To try and regain her laugh, he paused a step until he could look her up and down with a leer. "Oh, I'd say you've got excellent jeans." She blushed. A quality he found fascinating and he delighted in causing it.

Anna looked back at him and swatted out with her bear in retaliation. In doing so, she wasn't watching where she was walking and tripped over a guy wire.

Jack's reflexes reacted automatically. He caught her before she hit the ground and set her back on her feet. The moment stretched when their eyes met. Hers shaken, his intense. Jack felt the skin of her upper arms against his palms, smooth, warmed by the sun, surprising muscles under satin.

He let go immediately when she stiffened. "Sorry." Though he wasn't in the least. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. They tingled.

She was still a moment, studying him with a carefully blank expression. Jack shrugged uncomfortably and looked away. _Damn, he couldn't just let her fall could he?_

"I should be more careful." _Oh, yes. Much, much more careful._ Though she knew - absolutely - that she wouldn't be. She deliberately held out her hand to him. "Come on. I'm hungry."

He looked at her offered hand, then at her face. She was smiling again - _Thank God -_ that sweet smile she reserved only for him. He slowly reached out and clasped her hand, twining their fingers together. He felt a jolt shock up his arm that he put down to static electricity. "How can you be hungry after eating that big a lunch?"

"More good genes." She gave a tug and they started walking together. "Okay. Curly Fries are pretty self-explanatory, but what are Elephant Ears?"  
  
"They're kinda round thingies. Dough, cinnamon sugar, jam." The relief at just holding her hand threatened to swamp him. _Why was it that so simple an act felt so tremendous? _He gave her a grin. "You wanna split one?"

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"Just don't forget to keep them all separated." Jack admonished, holding her front door open for her to go through. "If you put them together, they'll fight."

"I'll remember." Anna linked her arm through his as they continued slowly down the steps to his truck. Jack knew about tropical fish. _Why didn't that surprise her? _She chuckled. "Well, here we are saying goodbye in the dark again."

"I don't mind." A whole day, or nearly. He hadn't spent a whole day in one woman's company, outside of Carter, in a month of Sundays.

"It is beautiful, isn't it?" She stood a few steps from him, her head tipped back to the moon.

He leaned a hip on the balustrade and just looked at her. In the dim light, she looked like some pagan goddess worshiping the stars. "I'll say. Never seen anything like it."

When she glanced back at him, she knew he didn't mean the night. "Jack..." At least he couldn't see her blushing in the dark. It was a reaction she couldn't control no matter how hard she tried.

She wasn't used to compliments, personal ones, any way. If he'd been saying something about her singing she'd know exactly what to say. Something witty and intelligent to pass it off, deflect the focus from herself. But he was looking at her. Looking at her, into her, through her, all at once. With that intense concentration that was his specialty. _Looking at her. _"I never know how to respond when you say things like that to me."

"Yes, you do." He didn't need light to see the flush of embarrassment on her cheeks. _God, he loved that. _"And you do it very well, if I must say."

Gravely, she shook her head and came back to take his hand once more. "I wish you wouldn't."

He fell into step beside her, deliberately dragging his feet. He simply didn't want this day to end. "Because you think it's not true?" She only looked at him seriously. "Well. If wishes were horses, and all that. You'll just have to get used to it because I don't intend to stop."

She gave an exasperated sigh. When he had that tone of voice it wasn't any good to try and talk him out of it. _Stubbornness, thy name is Jack O'Neill._ "You just do it to embarrass me."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "Your point being...?" She laughed, like he wanted. Blushing and laughing. He didn't know when he'd developed a fondness for those two responses, but it had become his goal to make both happen as often as possible.

Anna wondered how her walkway had gotten so short. They were at his truck in an impossibly few number of steps. "Will I..." She stopped abruptly, appalled that she was about to ask a very leading question. She shook her head quickly at his questioning look. "Never mind."

"Anna." He faced her. With one of her hands captured in his, he used his other one to push back the hair from her face. "Don't. Not ever with me." In the moonlight, her eyes were huge dark pools. "Ask me."

Gathering her courage, because he asked her to, she took his free hand so they stood together. "Will I see you tomorrow?"

"If you want to, sure." _Sweet! _"Why don't you come to my place for dinner?"

Add that shyly sweet smile to the list of things he liked to see. "All right."

"All right, what?" He jokingly repeated their conversation from the night before.

"All right. I'll come to dinner at your house tomorrow night." Her smile turned teasing. "Can you cook?"

"Only if you count a mean barbecued hot dog. But I'm a master at take-out." He told her his address, sure that her photographic memory would lodge it firmly. "Look. I'm not sure exactly what time I'll be done. You just come on over, late afternoon-ish. If I'm not there, there's a spare key behind the frog." At her surprised look, he shrugged his shoulders. Cassie had made him that Frog Prince plaque during an art class in seventh grade. "A friend made it for me. You can't miss it."

"All right. Spare key behind the frog. Late afternoon. I'll be there." He would leave now. She didn't want him to go so soon. "I had a really wonderful time today, Jack."

"Yeah, me, too." They were still standing close together, his hands holding hers. He made no move to leave. "I haven't enjoyed a carnival so much since Margie Jenkins kissed me on the Tilt-O-Whirl in sixth grade."

"Hmm. Margie Jenkins?" He watched her eyes deepen another shade, her smile go from shy to tempting. She took a step forward, he took a step back. Another step forward, another back, until he was up against the fender of his truck.

"Aah. Yeah. Margie..." Her lips brushed over his, barely making contact. He felt like he'd been struck by lightening. Her eyes were open, watching him, so green he could swear that they glowed. Her mouth was still on his, soft and warm. Her breath sighed, a silent moan that hummed through him as he sank into surprising heat, bringing her body against him.

She jolted like a startled doe when his mouth slid away from hers, grazing her cheek. He cupped her chin in his hand to keep her from bolting. He felt her pulse throb under his fingers as he eased back to look in her eyes. "That was loads better than Margie Jenkins. Let's try that again."

Her mind was a blur of shocked pleasure, her head reeled in long, slow circles. _This wasn't what she'd thought it was going to be. _She'd only meant to tease him, to laugh with him again, to thank him for a wonderful day. But a kiss had never been like that before. "I don't think...."

"That's good. Don't think." Jack pushed back the hair from her face with both hands, his fingers diving deep into the thickness of it. Her breathing was trembling audibly now. He saw the fear, and the excitement, as he leaned closer. He hesitated, giving her a chance to protest, to tell him to stop.

She didn't. She was under a spell made of moonlight and couldn't move, couldn't speak. Anna's lips trembled apart, the hands fisted on his chest spread until she felt his speeding heartbeat in her palms.

He watched her eyes drift shut before his mouth touched hers. His lips were firm and gentle, barely touching hers, as she had done before. He lingered for a moment, keeping the kiss soft. He brushed his mouth over hers, once, again, then returned with more pressure.

Anna felt her knees about to buckle. In defense, she curled her hands around his arms. There were muscles, hard muscles that she wouldn't remember until much later. Now she could only think of his mouth. He was barely kissing her at all, yet the shock of the impact winded her, made her head spin faster.

Under his patient urging her lips grew mobile, generous. Trusting. Slowly, because there was no other way, he deepened the kiss. Anna's fingers tightened on his arms convulsively. Jack kept his hands in her hair, drawing out every ounce of pleasure from her mouth alone.

He'd wondered - God knew how often - what it would be like. The reality surpassed even his vivid imagination. Here was a mouth to savor. Full, generous. It wasn't a mouth a man could hurry over. He scraped his teeth lightly over her bottom lip and thrilled to the low, helpless purr that answered him.

He knew what it was to be hungry - for food, for love, even for a woman - but he had never experienced this raw, painful need. There was fire here, a furnace under the shyness, struggling to burn through the armor of her composure. She was trembling, erotic, unconscious little shivers that shot need through him. A greedy roaring began to grow in his head. He hadn't realized it was so close to the surface. So close to breaking free. Losing control.

She was trembling - or maybe he was. The uncertainty over who was more dazed had him slowly, carefully drawing away. Though it took some effort, he lifted his head and waited for Anna's eyes to open.  
She could do nothing but stare at him, her green eyes dark, cloudy, aroused. Stunned.

"Jack." It came out in a shaky whisper. Never before, and she was sure, never again would a man affect her that thoroughly, that quickly. She craved it, at the same time she feared it. Taking a quivering breath, she tried to steady her voice. "Do you want to come back inside?"

"Yes. Yes, I really, really, want to come inside." He lowered his brow to hers. "Which is why I'm going to get in my truck and drive home." _And take a really - really - cold shower, maybe beat my head against the wall for several minutes._

"I don't understand." He saw the confusion in her expression, cursed himself for causing it when her fingers loosened and her hands dropped away from his arms.

"Anna..." How could he make her understand? He didn't even understand himself. He caught her eyes with his. To stop himself from touching her again he slid his hands in his pockets. She was watching him with a combination of hurt and humiliation. "I can't just..." _God, he was bad at this. _"It's too much. Too soon."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... I'll..." Anna felt tears, hated, weak tears, gather in her throat. She turned to run back up the walkway.

He stopped her with a hand on her arm, though she didn't look at him. "Anna. Don't." He watched a tear squeeze out of her closed eyes and trail down her cheek. He tugged her around until she faced him again, lifting her tear-streaked face and brushing at the wetness with his thumb. Tears got to him every time. It didn't matter that he knew she didn't want to shed them. "I think we just got ahead of ourselves a little bit."

He endured her drenched eyes studying him once again. _What was she looking for? _He hadn't a clue, only that she seemed to find it. "Too much. Too soon." She restated.

He nodded and risked letting go of her arm to reach in his pocket for a handkerchief. She accepted it cautiously, drying her face. When she looked at him she was under control. He took another risk in trying to put his feelings into words. "God knows I want you, Anna. I just need to be sure why."

"All right. I think I understand that." She nodded to accent her agreement, unconsciously twisting his handkerchief in a gesture that revealed her nerves. "I guess I shouldn't come over tomorrow."

"No way. I think it's a great idea." He caressed her smooth cheek one more time. "Remember, the spare key's behind the frog."

"I'll remember."

"I'll see you tomorrow, then." He hesitated, opened his mouth to say - something, he wasn't sure what - then shook his head and slid a grin at her. "Hey. Ask me to stay again sometime, okay?"

She responded with a smile and he knew everything was all right. He kissed her again, a quick pressure of lips, just to prove to himself that he could. Dropping his hand from framing her face, he went around the front of his truck and climbed in the driver's side.

He turned the ignition and gazed at her for a long moment through the window. She was still smiling, her fingers pressed to her lips. When he put the truck in gear and drove off, it took a great deal of concentration not to look back in the mirror.

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Jack was tired and pissed in the way only high-level brass and politicians could piss him off. He'd had his fill of both earlier - _right up to there_ - during a long afternoon of useless meetings and long, boring briefings. He wanted several beers, a shower and dinner in no particular order. He tugged hard at the knot of his uniform's dress tie on his way in from the driveway.

His mood was awful enough that he considered calling Anna and cancelling. He didn't want to inflict himself on anyone else. Pushing the door shut, he dropped his briefcase, threw his keys and hat onto the table, and froze.

His house smelled - _good_. In fact, his house hadn't smelled this good in - _well, it had never smelled quite this good._

A radio was playing accompanied by familiar humming and vaguely industrious clinking sounds in the kitchen. His mood did a quick and complete one-eighty at the thought of a beautiful woman and a home-cooked dinner. Garlic, tomatoes, cheese, something Italian. _Hot damn! _

"Anna?" He called out. Maybe Thor had had a yen to learn about Earth cooking, but he was betting on her.

"Back here, Jack." Came her reply. He went down the hall to the kitchen doorway and paused. He took in the picture she made standing in his kitchen while he folded his aviator sunglasses into his pocket. _How long had it been since he'd come home to find a woman puttering in the kitchen?_

She wore a pair of well-worn cut-offs and tank top, flip-flops on her feet, her hair pulled back into a curling ponytail. He couldn't really believe she was as old as she said she was when she looked like a college student. She was frosting a cake with pink tinged icing. "Hey! What's cookin'?"

He popped open the oven door to take a peek and get a good whiff. "I thought we were doing take-out?"

"We were. Until I woke up this morning and felt like home-made." She leaned a hip against the counter, struggling with nerves. Was she supposed to act like last night had never happened? It might be the safest thing to do, but if that meant she would never feel again what she'd felt last night, she wasn't sure if she wanted to be safe anymore. "I hope you like lasagna."

"Love it. And cake?" She had a smudge of frosting on her chin. The urge to see what her skin tasted like was strong. His mouth was watering and it had nothing to do with powdered sugar.

"Lemon with raspberry icing. And a salad as well." He was looking at her again. She self-consciously tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She supposed it was the directness of his candid examination that made it uncomfortably intimate and so different from being on stage. "I did most of it at home." He stuck his finger into the frosting bowl for a taste. "I bribed Walter to drive me over after our practice this afternoon with some extra lasagna."

"I wondered how you got here." She was watching him again. Her green eyes calm like a cat's, a little smile curving her lips. _What was she looking for?_"What?"

"I've never seen you in uniform before. You look different - intimidating." _Handsome as sin. _She tempted herself by taking a step closer, running a finger over the colored squares and medals on his chest. There were a lot of them. "I don't suppose you can tell me what any of these are for?"

"I'd have to shoot you if I did." He said with a smile, though it was true. Most of the honors he'd earned were from very classified, very secret, missions. "Believe me, I wouldn't be wearing this get-up if I didn't have to. We had a dog and pony show today." He tested himself by spanning his hands around her waist. The small remaining distance between them disappeared.

"Were you the dog or the pony?" She rested her hands on his shoulders. Anna knew that she should be nervous, that she should take a step away. That she shouldn't let him. But she wasn't, and she didn't. And, oh, she wanted him to.

"A smart mouth. I knew there was a smart mouth in there." He grinned at her and got a smile in return. Not a shy one either. This one was a total dare.

"What are you going to do about that?" His eyes dropped to her lips. She could practically feel his mouth on hers. A breath trembled in and out.

"Oh, I've got some ideas." But instead of kissing her senseless, he reached over to the counter and picked up the glass of wine she'd poured for herself and took a quick sip, all the while keeping his gaze locked on hers. "Is there any more of this?"

"What?" Her eyes blinked as she struggled to keep up. They weren't calm anymore, weren't clear, bottle-glass green. They were cloudy with anticipation, the color of the lake in front of his cabin in Minnesota. "What did you say?"

"Is there any more of this wine?" He swirled the red liquid around in the crystal before taking another drink. "I thought I'd change before dinner, if there's time."

"You want something to drink." She had to lean against the sink when she lost the support of his body. How was she supposed to think when she could barely breath? He hadn't even kissed her and every ounce of blood in her body tingled.

"Yeah. Pour me a glass, would you?" Jack set her glass down and fingered up another swipe of frosting as he left the room, throwing her a grin over his shoulder. He was back in seconds. "Oh, yeah. There's this, too."H

He came to her, grabbed her thick, dark hair, and brought her mouth within a breath of his. He was close enough to see the pupils of her eyes dilate. Close enough that her sigh warmed his face. Throwing caution right after common sense, he pressed his mouth to hers, taking them both deep in an instant. He was over his head, drowning in the deep green lake that was Anna. The sugar on her cheek only added to the taste of her. Moonlight and starlight, right there in his kitchen.

His mouth was hot and eager on hers. Not asking, but she gave freely. She would give him whatever he wanted. Whatever he needed. She clung to him, the only point of stability, her mouth wild and willing, her body vibrating like a live wire under his possessive, urging hands.

She would have begged if she'd had the breath, if she could have formed a thought, for something, anything, to ease the grinding ache he'd set free. She wanted, but she didn't know what. She needed, and that need was only him.

She feared - him, herself. She feared this unknown place where he was taking her. Feared it, and desired it. One as equally as the other.

He wasn't sure why he drew back, why he resisted finishing what he'd started, even if he hadn't meant to start something this serious. Maybe it was the subtle waves of anxiety he felt vibrating from her. Or maybe it was the shock of discovering the echo of that apprehension in himself.

He took a step back, a small but vital step, and watched her gorgeous eyes slowly clear.

She struggled to firm her buckling knees. "I don't know what you want me to do." She touched trembling fingers to trembling lips. "No one's ever wanted me the way you seem to want me. No one's ever made me feel the way you do."

"This is going to sound like a huge cliche, but it's never been like this for me either." That was a dangerous thought. One he would have to think about very carefully.

"I thought..." She swallowed before she could continue. "I thought we agreed we were going too fast."

"I don't know." He combed his fingers through mahogany silk until it lay shining on her shoulders. Ran his hands down her arms to link their fingers together. "I might have been wrong about that." He squeezed once and released his hold on her. "I do know that I like being with you. I like touching you. And I like kissing you. And somewhere down the road, we're going to like doing a lot more than that. But there's two of us on this trip, Anna, and we'll only get to the end together. If you don't want to go along, you better tell me now."

Only her determination not to embarrass herself further kept her voice from shaking. "I can't say that I don't like it... this... whatever this is that's happening between us, because I obviously did. It's just...."

"Too fast. Too soon." He tilted his head and studied her while she nodded in agreement. The pulse at her throat was jumping, and her skin was flushed. "I guess we should try to slow down some then."

"Some." She put together the scraps of her nerve and stepped forward to slip her hands up from his chest to frame his face. "Just don't let it be too slow, okay?"

"I can do that." He touched his lips to hers and drew her closer, careful to keep his hands easy, his mouth gentle before he stepped back once more. "Pour me some wine. I'll just be a minute."

When he was out of sight and, she hoped, out of earshot, she let out an explosive sigh, feeling like she'd just avoided a tumble from a very high cliff. And part of her regretted not taking the plunge. She realized that she might not have the choice to jump or not still in front of her if Jack O'Neill had been a different kind of man.

He wanted her, but he didn't know her. He didn't know what she wanted, what she needed. She wasn't certain herself, so how could he be?

_Well, maybe it was time - past time - for her to find out_. Anna turned to take a glass from the cupboard and poured his wine. With a self-deprecating chuckle she set it down and went back to frosting her cake.

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	3. Transpositions Changes in the Key of Li...

Jack had never found the separation between his work and his personal life so difficult. On the one hand, he was Colonel Jonathan O'Neill, of the United States Air Force. He led his team, SG-1, through the top-secret Stargate to alien worlds light years from Earth, making the galaxy safe for peace-loving beings everywhere.

On the other, he was Jack O'Neill. An ordinary man on the verge of a torrid relationship with a beautiful but mysterious jazz singer. A woman who appeared to like him, with all his quirks. A woman who never asked questions about his unexplained absences and minor injuries. A woman who tasted like moonlight and whose body fit next to his as if made to be there.

He'd never thought of himself as one of those touchy-feely kind of guys, but the need to sample, to touch her, was one he gave in to as often as possible. Fortunately, she seemed similarly afflicted, though they were both being very careful with the physical aspect of their developing relationship.

He'd been married before, for fifteen years, to a woman he'd loved with all his heart. But Sara had never been part of his life in Special Ops. She and their son Charlie had been his refuge from the horrors of his classified and highly dangerous career. He'd never wanted it to touch her. Them.

He'd never felt such an overwhelming urge to talk to Sara about what he was doing, the good and the bad. Even after those hideous months in Iraq, he had handled the aftermath of his capture, torture, and subsequent rescue on his own. Sara and Charlie and his life with them had nothing to do with the reality.

But he found himself having to be cautious around Anna, and that didn't set well with him. Normally, it was second nature for him to dodge the questions, redirect the small talk away from his job under Cheyenne Mountain. With Anna, he'd caught himself more times than he could count on the verge of saying something revealing. On his own. Without even an indirect probe from her.

Once he'd even turned to say something to her when he was on a mission a bajillion light years from Earth. She seemed to be with him, in his head, even when she wasn't there.

For someone who hadn't felt more than an occasional twinge for a woman in too long to remember, he was certainly feeling a barrage of them now. He hadn't been a monk over the past years, but his life had felt empty, and he'd wanted it that way, until Anna.

It should have made him nervous. It should have made him suspicious. Instead, he was nervous and suspicious because he _wasn't_ nervous and suspicious. He'd even broken several rules - which didn't necessarily bother him - and used the base computers to look her up. And he didn't find anything he didn't already know.

Except that she'd been married. And had born a child. And that both husband and daughter were dead.

Two facts that she hadn't mentioned in all their time together. Was that what gave her that air of sadness and secrets he had yet to break through? Was that what put the haunted look in her eyes?

He glanced down at the pad he was currently doodling on. Daniel was in the middle of one of his long, involved debriefings about what they'd uncovered on P6H-blah blah blah, and Jack had already heard it. He saw that he'd drawn Anna's name and outlined it with wavy lines and - Oh, Jeez! - That was a heart with an arrow through it! He quickly began scratching it out, shooting looks right and left to see if Carter or Teal'c seated on either side had noticed his high school slip-of-the-pen.

"So, Colonel, what are your recommendations?" General Hammond questioned Jack, ignoring his second-in-command's frantic scribbling.

"Hmm?" Jack looked up, startled to be called upon in the midst of his cover-up. "Oh. Yeah. Recommendations. It's a good spot for an off-world base, Sir. The ruins are defensible, with some minor improvements. And Daniel's whatchamacallums..."

"Hieroglyphics." The archeologist inserted.

"Yeah... His new little pictures will keep the science boys busy for a while. I'd say put SG-14 and SG-11 on a standard recon for a few weeks, maybe send up a drone or two, see what's around farther away from the Gate. Then set up the base." He shrugged and, for good measure, pulled off his doodling sheet and wadded it up. "Whatever the Latin is for what comes after Alpha and Beta."

"Cappa." His know-it-all major chimed in. Carter returned the smirk in good kind.  
  
"Whatever. Cappa Site, then. Though it sounds like a coffee shop to me."

"Very well, Colonel, draw up the duty rosters and distribute them to SG's 11 and 14. We'll put the Cappa site on rotation for the science teams. Dr. Jackson, I'll need your recommendations for science personnel." General Hammond stood, causing O'Neill and Carter, the other Air Force officers in the room, to stand as well. "Take a few days off people. I'll see you all back here on Monday."

"Certainly, General Hammond." "Yes, Sir." "Thank you, Sir."

"Have a nice weekend yourself, Sir." Jack was oblivious to the looks his teammates exchanged as he sank a jump shot with his balled up paper in the waste can in the corner of the room. "Well, kids, that's the end of another rousing week at Stargate Command. Join us next time for the continuing adventures of SG-1."

Jack was about to swing onto the stairs but was stopped by Daniel's loud comment. "Going to disappear on us again, Jack?"

He dropped back to face his team. They sat at the table, facing him with varying degrees of discomfort and belligerence. "Whaddaya mean, Danny?"

"I mean," Daniel scrunched his face up like the words he had to say tasted bad. "That whenever we've been on Earth lately, you've done a disappearing act on us. You're off-base as soon as you can, and you're never around if we want to do stuff together. Like hang out or go to the movies or anything." Daniel passed off the comment to Carter.

"It's like you don't want to be with us if it's not work. Like you're avoiding us."

Teal'c added in his two cents. "Indeed, O'Neill. It appears that you do not wish to be in our company."

Jack took in their faces and shoved his hands into his pockets. Rocked on his feet a couple times. "I've just been busy, that's all." He shrugged.

"With what?" _Yeah. Trust Carter to not leave something lie._

"Well..." Maybe it was time. "You want to come with, meet me topside in twenty. I gotta post those new rotations first." He continued his swing up the stairs, wondering if they would, or not. Wondering if this was a good thing - or not. But he needed to see Anna and his closest friends together. To see what they thought of each other, if they got along.

Besides, it would be a nice way of avoiding a conversation with Anna about her family that he wasn't sure he was ready to have. Because he hadn't told her about Charlie yet, either.

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The Getaway was in full Saturday night swing when Jack and his three companions stepped through the door. Tommy and his two baseball buddies called a greeting from the bar that Jack answered with a wave. They were met at the 'Please wait to be seated' sign by the fresh-faced Kelli-with-an-I.

"Hey, Jack. Wasn't sure if we were gonna see you tonight. You brought friends? Super! You'll need a table then, right? Your timing's really great, we just had one free up." Kelli chirped at them as she escorted them to a free table and took their drink orders. "Anna's totally rocking tonight. I'll let her know you're here."

"Thanks, Kelli. She knows already." Jack had seen her as soon as he'd entered. He watched her, talking to some of her regular fans, then she sensed him - across a crowded room no less. She turned and spotted him right off, like he'd called her name, and sent him that fabulous smile before turning back to her conversation.

"Super! Be right back."

Daniel and Teal'c watched the waitress sashay away, her short skirt flipping cheekily. Teal'c's eyebrow raised in appreciation and Daniel sighed as he turned back to face Sam's sarcastic look and Jack's smile. "Perky little thing, isn't she?" He asked of no one at the table in particular. "So, Jack. Who's Anna and why does she need to know you're here?"

"Ah... Well... Anna's just... She's the, ah..." His rambling non-answer was interrupted by Anna's combo picking up a rambunctious Latin tune. _One of his favorites_, he recognized, _Night and Day_, the first song he'd heard her sing. His companions ignored the instrumental disturbance waiting for his answer. When Anna began to sing, he nodded at the stage. "That's Anna. Anna Jordan. She's the singer here."

Three heads swivelled in unison to watch the stage. Anna was, as Kelli had said, rocking. Piano, bass, and guitar were swinging together with Anna leading the way. Jack had heard her sing enough now that he could tell a good performance from a great one - and this one was _darn_ good.

"Jack," Daniel had to stop and swallow, which didn't hurt Jack's ego a bit, "She's beautiful."

"Yes. Yes, she is." Jack responded proudly. Particularly tonight. She was all in black - Anna had the ability to give the term 'little black dress' an entirely new meaning - accented only by her emeralds. The gems sparkled less brightly than the woman herself.

"Indeed, O'Neill, I concur with Daniel Jackson's opinion. What type of music is she singing?" Teal'c had trouble still with all the different music of his adopted planet. On Chulak, music was restricted to the priests and priestesses of the temples.

"It's called jazz, Teal'c."

"I was under the impression that jazz music involved the use of wind instruments and the singing of a land called Dixie."

"That's Dixieland jazz. This is... newer, mostly." He was saved from a detailed discussion of the history of the art form by the arrival of their drinks.

"Hey, Jack-o, mon. Ya worthless son of a dog! Didn't t'ink ya had da spine ta show dat ugly face o' yours roun' here so casual like." Tommy gracefully slipped his impressive bulk between the close tables with the skill of long practice. Four frosty glasses were deposited on the table.

"Can I help it if nobody else in this dump can pick a winner?" Jack picked up his beer and aimed a toast at the huge black man.

"One win, I can see it. Maybe two, if ya had a lucky charm." Tommy turned to the others at the table and jerked a huge thumb at a smug-looking O'Neill. "But da mon what picks winners four weeks in a row has ta have da devil's own help. Won t'ree hundred fifty dollars off da rest of us poor mortal souls."

Jack shrugged with mock humility. "Baseball pool." He added in explanation to the others. "I guess, since I'm flush now, this had better be on me."

Tommy reared back with a huge laugh. "Hah! I guess you be right 'bout that!" He stood with his fists propped on his hips. "So ya better be for buyin' supper, as well. My Belle, she got sump'tin' special she want ya ta try. I'll tell 'er ya finally come in."

"How about it? You guys game?" He asked of his companions. With their general agreement, Tommy aimed a half-hearted slap at Jack's head as he headed away.

Daniel watched the retreating Tommy, as well. "You make the most interesting friends, Jack."

"Thanks, I think."

Anna had a front row seat to observe Jack and his three friends. And they were friends, that much was quite clear to her from their body language and casual interactions. But more, she saw these people were special to Jack. Not just friends. Family.

Whatever he did at Cheyenne Mountain involved them, and she was more convinced now that what he did had very little to do with radar and more to do with raiding. She knew it was dangerous - she didn't need to look far to see the evidence every time he came back from one of his "business trips."

Bumps, scraps, ugly bruises, bad strains, strange burn-like marks. Once, it had been a bullet wound. She could feel them as if they were her own, and she ached at not being able to help him, or even to ask him about them. She knew he wouldn't - couldn't - tell her.

She accepted that, or thought she had, because she had things she wasn't telling him as well. Though it was becoming clear to her that she would have to, sooner rather than later. Her feelings and emotions for this exasperating man had reached a point from which she couldn't turn away.

The people he had brought with him tonight had something in common. Shared danger formed strong bonds, and the four people sitting at the table eating Belle's special were tightly knit together.

A professorial-looking man, despite the well-toned body beneath the nondescript polo shirt and khakis. Brown hair and mild blue eyes behind studious glasses. A man who watched. Not like Jack did - with an eye for trouble and back-up plan - but how people did what they did, with who and how.

She hadn't thought he was dangerous until she saw him react to a glass being shattered on the floor behind him. He was out of his chair and reaching for a non-existent weapon faster than she could see. The look in his eyes hadn't been professorial or mild in that moment. He had covered it well, helping the flustered Kelli to clear up the mess, but Anna had seen. The scholar and the soldier.

There was no such division in the other man at the table. Here was danger made flesh. A warrior. Purely, simply. A large, physically imposing man who seldom spoke, but was always listened to. A force, she was sure, to be reckoned with on or off the battlefield. A man who was comfortable with violence, yet one who was careful of his strength.

But it was the woman at the table that Anna found herself watching. Perhaps because the woman always seemed to be watching back. She was a blond, blue-eyed natural beauty with a smile full of laughter. Slender, though Anna never assumed that meant weak. One of those women who could pull off wearing her Hepburn-esque slim pants and long coats with both body and soul. Confidence oozed out her pores.

Jack worked every day with a woman any man would give up an extremity for. _What is he doing spending all his free time with me?_ Anna thought bleakly. She felt woefully self-conscious and inadequate.

She finished the last song of the set and announced her usual fifteen minute break, acknowledging Jack's wave of invitation with a nod.

"Going to get a once over from the parents, I see." Walter said with a smirk. "Bet they check your teeth, too."

Lee's guitar started the theme from "Jaws." "Oh, stop it!" Anna replied crankily. She already felt on the defensive and her own friends weren't making it any easier. To give herself a minute to settle, she went to the bar for her water before swinging around the back of the floor towards Jack's table.

Samantha Carter wasn't having a good night. Especially since she'd learned that the reason Colonel O'Neill - _she always had to think of him as her CO _- had played hide-and-seek with them the last two months was another woman.

A very beautiful woman. A woman who's lush curves - _Sam was absolutely sure_ - had never been mistaken for a boy's. A woman who sang wonderful songs about love and romance with a voice that promised a man everything. Who gestured languidly with perfectly manicured, long-fingered hands. Sam curled her cracked, torn fingernails into her palms.

The Colonel always saw her with her hands wrapped around a P-90 and wearing a flak jacket. There was no way she could compete with this Anna woman in her simply elegant black dress that showed off miles of shapely legs and quite a bit of curvy breast. Sam bit her lip and wished once again she'd chosen something more feminine to wear that night.

"So, Jack." Daniel began as he scraped up the last of a surprisingly wonderful meal. He'd let his friend off the hook while they ate, but he intended to get to the bottom of Jack's new relationship.

"You haven't been here all these days, what have you and _Anna_ been up to?"

"I don't know, Daniel," Jack started, wiping his mouth with his napkin. "Just normal people stuff."

"Normal people stuff?"

"Yeah, you know, the kinds of things that don't involve galaxy-hopping and dealing with snake-heads." He threw the napkin down and leaned back in his chair.

"I am unfamiliar with the courting rituals of the Tau'ri." Teal'c put in. "What do humans do in preparation for mating?"

Daniel didn't think he'd ever seen Jack turn that particular shade of red before. "Listen," Jack said firmly. "We're not courting or preparing for any kind of..." Here he had to stop and swallow down the panic. "Mating. We're just hanging out together. Doing stuff."

"What kind of stuff?" Sam asked swirling her beer in her glass, without looking at him.

"Jeez! Look, okay... Stuff like dinner, the movies." He stared at the three faces listening, expecting more from him. "We... Ah... Went shopping for a credential, or something like that, for her dining room."

"A credenza?" Daniel asked, incredulous. Jack hated antiquing.

"Yeah, that's it. What else..." Jack searched his mind back over the last weeks. "We repainted my spare room. There's a bed in there now if you guys need to crash at my place. We put a fish pond in her back yard. I taught her to drive and we found a car for her. We've been hiking and fishing and...."

"You took her fishing?" Sam was both surprised and hurt. Fishing - or rather, the act of fishing, since he never managed to catch much - was something very special for her CO.

"Well, yeah. Just around here, up in the mountains. We haven't had the time to go to my place in Minnesota." Jack shrugged, a little uncomfortably. Sam had always refused his invitations to go fishing. "She doesn't actually fish. Usually meditates or does her yoga thing. Reads. We talk a lot."

"You? Talk?" Jack was starting to become slightly offended at the surprise in his friends' voices. Daniel sounded like he'd just admitted to being a bank robber instead of a conversationalist.

He raised a sarcastic brow. "I'm talking now, aren't I? See my lips moving?"

"I know you _can_ talk, it's just-"

Daniel was interrupted by a low, husky voice. "Jack?"

Sam found Anna Jordan as stunning in person as up on the stage under the spotlight. And she felt the beginning of an ending for something that had never really started.

The Colonel - _her Colonel_ - stood when Anna came to the table. They didn't exchange a kiss or hug, or another greeting. Just a look. That was all. And their fingers twined, joining them more completely than full body contact. Sam sighed at how right they looked together.

"Hey! Guys, this is Anna Jordan." His gesture swept around the table. Daniel and Teal'c both stood. He pulled up an extra chair from near-by as Daniel held out a hand.

"Ah... Hi. Daniel Jackson. We're very pleased to meet you."

"I feel the same way." _Ah, the dangerous professor. _Anna smiled into incredibly blue eyes that smiled right back.

Jack wasn't surprised that Anna had made a conquest so quickly. He took over the introductions, indicating the other end of the table. "This is... ah... Murray."

Teal'c inclined his head in his usual gesture. "It is indeed a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Anna returned the slight bow. It was a warrior's gesture, one she appreciated.

Jack turned to the last member of SG-1. "And Samantha Carter."

"_Major_ Sam Carter." He watched with some concern as the two women studied one another. Carter's emphasis of her rank worried him.

"Major." Anna returned the challenging look evenly as she sat in the chair Jack held for her. "Even in these enlightened times it takes courage and endurance to reach so high in the military. I admire women with your strength."

Effectively complimented and charmed by the simple sincerity she saw in the other woman's eyes, Sam could only swallow her anger and stammer her thanks before taking another drink of beer to ease her tight throat.

"Major Carter possesses those qualities in great abundance." Teal'c wasn't disturbed by becoming the object of Anna Jordan's scrutiny.

"What rank are you... Murray?" She was sure that wasn't his right name, but was also sure she would get no other.

"I hold no rank in the military of this country."

"But..." Anna turned in confusion towards Jack. "He's like you."

"Ex-cuse me?" Jack exchanged a look with Teal'c. "Don't see the resemblance, myself."  
"No, I mean..." Anna tried to explain. "He moves like you. Watches things, people, like you. I just thought he must have the same training."

"He 'watches' things like me?" Jack turned his chair around to sit with his arms propped across the back.  
  
"I've learned quite a bit about watching from being around you." She glanced at 'Murray' before facing Jack squarely. "There's a man sitting at your usual bar stool. Describe him for me."

"What...?" Jack turned instinctively to take a look.

Anna caught his head in her hands and looked into his eyes. "What's he wearing, Jack?"

"I didn't get a good look at him." Anna just smiled. He closed his eyes and tried to call the picture to mind. "All right. Ah... Brown loafers, tan khakis, white shirt, open at the neck. His tie's stuck in the left pocket of his tan windbreaker. Eyes brown, hair brown. He's had two beers-"

"Three, O'Neill." Teal'c corrected him.

"Three, then. He's a light-weight. Tommy's about to cut him off." When Anna smiled again and dropped her hands, he swivelled around to check his aim. It was a direct hit.

"But you didn't get a good look." Sam said, tongue in cheek. She hadn't noticed the man in particular, but obviously Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c had. Conspirators now, she and Anna smiled at each other.

Jack shrugged and threw up his hands. "He's sitting in my spot!"

"It wouldn't have mattered if I'd asked you about anybody else in the place. You still could have described them for me." Anna placed her hand on his arm. "It's what you do, Jack. It's who you are. The same as...Murray."

"Indeed. I have had training very similar to O'Neill's."

"Just - not from around here." Anna received another regal nod of affirmation. She wanted to probe further - the urge was nearly overwhelming - but she had made herself a promise a long time ago. And these were Jack's friends. "Well. I am glad to meet you. I was beginning to think that Jack had made all his friends up."

They all laughed, as she'd hoped, and the conversation continued on a lighter vein. When she had to return to the stage, Anna made her farewells. A look, a smile, a squeeze of hands was goodbye from Jack.

He watched her weave her way to the front and just couldn't leave it at that. With a mumbled excuse to his friends, he followed after her. He wasn't watching behind him so he missed the speculative look they shared.

"Anna! Hey!" Jack caught up with her at the side of the stage. _God, he loved it when she smiled at him like that. _"I... Ah..." He jerked a thumb towards the table over his shoulder. "I'm going to have to take...Murray back to the Base before you're done tonight. I... Ah."

"Then I'll see you tomorrow." She stepped close to him, felt the heat from his body seep into her.

"Yeah." He linked their fingers together. It was a discreet gesture. One he'd grown accustomed to. "Call me when you're up, we'll do something. Maybe dinner at my place."

"That sounds like a plan." She glanced over his shoulder. Three pairs of eyes were riveted on the two of them. "Do you think your friends would be scandalized if you kissed me?"

"God, I hope so." He responded with a smile, tugging her that final step. His mouth touched hers lightly, always keeping in mind that they were basically standing under a spotlight and not in the relative darkness and anonymity of her porch. Still, the feel of her lips, soft and warm against his, the taste of her, honey and moonlight, dragged him as close to the edge as ever.

"Hmm." Anna's sigh of pleasure as he lifted his head nearly did him in. "I'll definitely call you."  
  
"Okay. Um... Yeah. I'll just... Ah, go back to the... ah..."

"Table."

"Yeah. The, ah, table. See you." He backed away and bumped into a chair, righted himself and sheepishly returned to his friends while Anna stepped on stage to finish her show.

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Anna drove home slowly through the warm night air, the top down on the cute red convertible Jack had found for her. Driving was still new enough that she relished the feel of being in charge of her own car. Jack had told her that knowing how to drive would give her a sense of freedom - to go where she wanted, whenever she wanted, but it was the control that she appreciated most of all. He had given her that, along with everything else.

When she turned the corner onto her street, her heart gave a jump of happiness at seeing Jack's monster of a truck parked in front of her house. She accepted her reaction. And the emotions that went along with it.

She hadn't thought to guard her heart. It had never before needed protection. But in the last few weeks, she'd felt herself sliding, slipping, tumbling down the steep slope into love.

She had come to understand that they might have something together. That they might be something together. Whatever their differences. Whatever the risks. He lived in a violent world that was very different from her own, but with her he would have a refuge. A place for the kindness and tenderness she had seen in him. He'd allowed her to see that part of him, a part she knew he'd shared with few others. Maybe only those three she'd met tonight.

There had been a little boy he'd taught to cast a fishing line out at the lake. The stray dog that came by every day for the plate of scraps he left out. The way he'd flirted with old Mrs. Able in the produce section and made her cheeks as pink as cotton candy.

The way he watched her when she was performing. The pride in his eyes when she'd mastered parallel parking. Seeing those eyes go from whiskey brown to onyx black when he kissed her.

Though accepting that she loved this exasperating, demanding, secretive man hadn't been easy, she had in the end. Because there was nothing else that she could do.

It wasn't in her nature to fight with her fate. What would be, would be. She would deal with whatever consequences there were.

She parked in front of his truck and got out, picking up her shoulder bag from the passenger seat, and went up the walkway towards him. Jack sat on the top of her front stairs, waiting for her.

"Hello, there. I thought I wasn't going to see you 'til tomorrow." Jack rose and took her bag from her, setting it on the porch behind him. "Did you get Murray back to the Base?"

"Yeah." He urged her to sit on the step in front of him and began to rub her shoulders, another little ritual he'd become accustomed to. "I... Was driving home, and I ended up here."

"That's a nice thought." Anna simply melted under his hands. "Mmm. That feels wonderful."

"You have a lot of tension in your upper back and neck. Most women do."

"So it's a 'girl thing' then?"

"Guys handle stress differently. It usually involves swearing and fisticuffs." She chuckled and then groaned as Jack found a particularly nasty knot. He worked away most of the tension, but kept on rubbing, just to keep his hands on her. He really liked having his hands on her.

"Jack?"  
  
"Hmm?"

"I need to ask you a question. And I need you to answer me as honestly as you can."

"Oo-kay." He responded cautiously. He'd answer if he could. Unless she was going to ask him about what he did for the Air Force with Carter, Daniel, and 'Murray.'

"Is there anything between you and Major Carter?" She felt his hands still in their massage and knew she's caught him by surprise. He was silent a minute, and she wondered if he was going to answer her.

"Military regulations prohibit 'anything' from occurring between personnel in the direct chain of command."

Anna grasped his hands and swung around to face him. "I never guessed that you were such a stickler for regulations. And that wasn't my question."

He stood up and took the steps slowly to the bottom to stare, unseeing, at the night sky. "There's rules, and then there's rules."

When he didn't say anything further, Anna tried again. "Jack, she's a beautiful, intelligent, strong woman. I think I'd be more disappointed if you weren't attracted to her."

He turned back with a slight grin. "So you're not asking because you're jealous?"

"I didn't say that." She returned his smile and went to him, curved her palm around one cheek. "You have ties to her. To all three of them. They're there for anybody to see. And I'm not asking you to break them, or even change them." Her hand dropped away. "I just need to be sure you're free to make new ties with me."

He looked at her, searching her face, her eyes, before taking a few more steps down the walk. Anna stayed where she was, her arms crossed on her chest. He turned his gaze upward again. "I can't tell you that Carter and I haven't had our moments. Buts that's all they were. Moments. Little pieces of time outside of what was real. We both knew that. Know that."

"She's very... protective of you." She sat on the stair. Major Carter's suspicion had practically burned the air between them.

"Yeah. Well, I guess I feel the same way about her." Jack came back to sit next to her and take her hand in his. "I care a lot about Sam. A lot more than I should as her commanding officer. She's special to me." He squeezed the fingers he'd twined together to bring her gaze to his. "But she's not for me, Anna. If what Sam and I felt for each other was so special - so important - one of us would have already taken the steps to make sure we could have a relationship."

"Why haven't you?"

"Because she's got her own life to live. And I have mine. I don't have any guilty feelings about being with you, Anna. I wouldn't be here if I didn't feel free to be."

"I guess I already knew that."

"Then we've had this whole painful conversation because...?" Actually, he felt she'd gone kind of easy on him. She was always making it easy for him to open himself up to her.

"I think I just needed to hear you say it." Anna's wonderful laugh soothed him. "Thank you for it. I suppose you'll think I owe you one now."

"So pay up." At her confused look, he continued. "You asked me a question, I get to ask you one. Same rules. Honest question, honest answer."

"All right." He appreciated that her agreement was as cautious as his had been.

"Why haven't you told me about your husband and daughter?"

He winced at the grief and fresh hurt he saw in the moonlight. "You've been doing your homework."  
  
She hadn't said it as an accusation, but almost as if she'd expected it. "I guess it's not any of my business..." But she cut him off, and when she turned to face him, he saw the tears glimmering in the darkness. A knife twisted somewhere in the vicinity of his heart.

"If it's anybody's business, it would be yours." She swiped at the wetness on her cheeks almost impatiently. "I'm sorry. I ..." She swallowed back the rest of the tears, though it seemed she had an endless supply when it came to this subject. "I don't talk about it - I try to not think about it. It's like there's a gaping wound in my soul where she was."

Where _she was_, not _they_. Anna spoke of losing her daughter, not her husband. Jack wanted only to comfort her when she pressed her fingers into her eyes, as if to hold the tears in. "You can't know what it's like. To know you'll never see her go to her first day of school, or graduate from college. Get married, have children of her own. To sit in her room and have her things all around you and not have her. You can't know how painful that is."

_So she was going to make that easy for him, too. _He took her hands again, rubbing his thumbs soothingly across the tender skin of her knuckles. "I can know." He didn't look up, but felt her question anyway. "You remember, I told you I had an ex-wife?" He did look then, to see her nod of agreement. "Our son, Charlie. He... shot himself. With my hand gun. He was 10 years old."

"Oh, Jack. I'm so sorry. I didn't..." Her hand was warm against his face, soothing him now.

"No. You didn't know. Now you do." He wrapped his arms around her, taking the comfort she offered so effortlessly, so generously. Realizing he was giving it back to her, effortlessly, generously. In the sky above, a shooting star traced a fiery arc. He held on and rested his cheek on her hair, and made a wish. "Will you tell me what happened?"

Nodding again, she pulled him back to sit beside her on the stairs. For a long minute she said nothing, only stared at her tightly clasped hands. "You deserve the whole story, though parts of it will be hard for you to accept. I'm a very different person now, than I was then."

"Everybody changes, Anna. I'm not the same man now, either."

Sighing, she organized her thoughts. "Do you understand how people - whole societies, really - can live right alongside everyone else in the world, and yet, not really be a part of it?"

He shrugged lightly. "Sure, I guess. You got your Amish. Your Mormons. Your Kennedy family."

"Very much like the Kennedy's, I'm afraid. My marriage was an arranged one. To the eldest son of the family who raised me."

She couldn't have said anything more unbelievable to him. "An arranged marriage? In this day and age?"

"It's the traditional way to do things where I come from. And I can't tell you that my mother would have chosen any differently, had she been alive. She might have even discussed it before she died. Richard was eminently suitable, and it might have been the reason I was placed with the Sullivans."

She sounded so matter-of-fact about it. "And you agreed to this?"

"I told you, I was very different. Very - biddable - I suppose you could say. It was the way it was done. I didn't know any other." Her hands rose and fell in front of her in a helpless gesture. "And Richard was my friend. I thought he was, anyway. One of the few I was allowed. I thought that friendship could be the basis for something more, something deeper."

"But it wasn't."

"No." Her voice was quiet, resigned. "Our wedding night was a disaster, and it went downhill from there. But I'd been taught to do my duty. To be the wife that was expected of me. It was eight years before I could even think about being discontent. Another two before I could work up the courage to tell him."

"What did he say?" Abuse didn't always take the form of beatings. Aggressive indifference could be just as bad.

"He was very contrite, of course." She sighed heavily and rose to walk, her arms wrapped tight around her. "He persuaded me to give our marriage another try." She turned back to face him. "But I was starting to see things differently. I was about to tell him it was over when I found out I was pregnant."

"You didn't have to stay just because of that."  
  
"No, I didn't. But I did stay, and in the end, I was glad I had. Maia was a beautiful child. A princess. And Richard adored her. We both did. She gave us a common ground, and even if we couldn't live together as husband and wife, for five years we were very successful together as parents."

Jack couldn't imagine it. It sounded so bloodless. So passionless. He couldn't reconcile the image she painted of herself with the woman he knew. "How did they die?"  
  
She closed her eyes, seeing them, her husband and her daughter, as she hadn't allowed herself to see them for a long time. "It was a few days before her fifth birthday. We were going to have a party, and Maia wanted a new dress. A pink one, with frills and bows." She smiled at the memory of her daughter's girlish demand. "Richard and Maia were coming to meet me downtown so we could go shopping."

When she had to stop and take a deep breath, Jack gathered her close, her cheek nestled against his heart as if it belonged there. The tears were falling, fast and silent when she continued.

"They'd barely left the house. Running late. Richard was always running late. If they'd left when they were supposed to... If I hadn't asked them to come pick me up..."

Jack gave her a quick shake, wishing he'd never asked her, so she wouldn't have had to relive it again. "Anna, don't. It wasn't your fault. Whatever happened, it was not your fault."

"I know. I know." It was threatening to choke her, the feelings, the memories. She had to tell it now, or she never would. She buried her head in his shoulder drawing strength from him. "They were hit, head on, by a drunk driver. They were both killed instantly."

He said nothing, for there was nothing to say. He could only hold her as she cried, feeling the tears soak through his shirt. He cradled her head and held on, feeling his own grief mix with hers. Feeling that she cried for both of them. For Richard and Maia. For Charlie. Her tears were the catharsis he'd long denied himself.

He'd told Daniel, years before, that Charlie's death was something he could sometimes forget, but that he could never forgive himself for. Now, after so many years, so many tears shed and unshed, he could almost believe. Maybe... Maybe it hadn't been his fault either.

When he felt her calming, he began to run his hands over her back, soothing as he might have a child, until she sniffled one last time and drew away. He dug in his pocket for a handkerchief, but dried her tears himself. "There. Is that all now?"

"Most of it. Thank you."

"For making you cry?"

"For letting me. There's a big difference." She returned to the steps and sat, twisting his handkerchief in a familiar gesture. "Do you want to hear the rest?"

He sat beside her and she rested her cheek against his shoulder. "I'll listen to whatever you want to tell me."

"I don't remember much of what happened afterwards. It was such a dark place I went to." Jack knew all about that dark place, and what it cost to get out. _Thank God for Daniel. _"It was a long time, and I was hospitalized at some point." She began to play idly with his fingers. "When I came home, after, it was as if someone else was in my body doing normal things - shopping for groceries, cleaning house, seeing people. It wasn't really me. But they started to think I was all right again." She laughed, a quiet, sarcastic sound. "And they started to tell me I should marry again. Have a child again."

"The bastards." He said with some heat. He didn't know who _they_ were, he hated them anyway, for what they had put her through. She only laughed again, this time more freely. Closer to the laugh he treasured.

"Yes. Exactly. And if I had been what they expected, it would have worked. But I wasn't the biddable young woman they'd dealt with before. And I wouldn't do what they wanted me to do." She shrugged off twenty-five years of her life. "They basically said that if I wouldn't fall into line, I'd have to leave. So I left."

"What did you do? Where did you go?" She'd had nothing, no one, and had left her whole world behind.

"I moved around quite a bit. Trying to find a place to be, to live. I visited Ireland. Tried out Florida and California and places in between. Then I found myself in Colorado Springs. And I fell in love with this house." She gestured fondly behind her. "I found the Getaway, and Tommy and Belle, and my band. I found my place, my life. I began to feel alive again." Her hands came up to frame his face. "And then, a handsome Air Force colonel walked through the door. And my life hasn't been the same since."

It was so natural to move into his arms, to his lips. So easy and right to be tucked next to his side, to feel his hands move over her. Even though everything she'd been raised to believe told her it was wrong. He wasn't like her. He never would be. He'd never understand her. Believe her. He would end up using her, hating her, betraying her.

_But how could what she felt for him be wrong when she loved him so completely?_

She made him feel like a boy fumbling over his first girl. Except that he'd never felt this awkward with anything female before. Something was tearing loose inside of him. Something hard and unyielding that was being replaced with the wonder and the magic that was always between them.

The hunger and the impatient pull of desire was new to her. She felt it only with him. His kiss was urgent, she felt that as well. But beneath it was a caring she'd dreamed of, hoped for. Seduced by that alone, she murmured his name.

Tenderness came easily with her, and her sigh was like music. Her mouth, warm and sweet, moved over his face. She removed the layers he'd covered himself with. Not of cloth or kevlar, but layers of sarcasm and aloofness, the armor he'd built to survive. With her, he was helpless, more vulnerable than he'd been since he was a child. With her, he felt more of a man than he'd ever hoped to be.

She felt the change in him. The explosion of feelings and needs as he dragged her up into his arms to crush his mouth to hers. It poured into her, leaving her breathless and shaken. Without understanding, without needing to, her heart answered him with equal passion.

He wanted her, as he'd wanted few things in his life. He felt her melting surrender and realized he could have her. All of her. Her body, her mind, her incredibly generous soul. All he had to do was reach out for it. He wondered if she knew what she was offering him. "Anna," he murmured as he nuzzled his favorite spot behind her ear, up to her temple. "Ask me to stay tonight."

She drew in a breath and sent up a silent prayer to whatever deity would listen that she was making the right choice. "You know I want that, too."

He saw the hesitation in her eyes, heard it in her voice. "But?"

"I can't. Not now." If it could have been so easy, simple nights of pleasure and nothing more, there wouldn't have been a problem. Love complicated matters.

"Why not now, when you did before."

"Because I'm a coward."

"That's bullshit." His frown was immediate. It had taken more courage than most people had to survive what she'd just told him. Then another reason surfaced. Coming on the heels of the story of her marriage, he couldn't help but think it. "Anna, are you afraid of me? Of... being with me?"

"No." When her answer was immediate and baffled, he knew he'd been wrong. "No, Jack. I'm afraid of losing you. And don't tell me that it can't happen because you know it can."

"Yeah. Okay. It can happen. But I'm not planning on it." He set her down with a hard jolt on the step beside him and stood. Frustration showed in the impatient hand he pushed through his hair. "Anna, if this is some game you're playing...."

"It's no game, Jack." With a snort of disgust he paced away. "You know me better than anyone. My likes, my dislikes. My strengths, my weaknesses. All my hopes. All my secrets, now. All of them. Except one."

_Secrets_, he thought bitterly. _When was he going to be able to get away from them? _He directed a hard look over his shoulder. "Then tell me."

"It's not that simple. You know it's never that simple." A mistake here would cost her more than her heart. "Can you tell me what you really do for the Air Force at Cheyenne Mountain?"

For a second, Anna actually thought he would. She saw the struggle cross his face, the tension seep into his body. In the end, his training won, as she'd known it would. "You know I can't do that."

"You can't. Because of your duty. Your honor." She moved in front of him, to look him in the eye. "I understand about secrets, Jack. About why they have to be made. About why they have to be kept." Her smile was a little melancholy. "When you come to my bed, I won't be able to keep this one from you."

Well, at least she'd said _when_, Jack thought positively, then a suspicion formed. "You're not like, going to tell me your really a man, or anything like that, are you?"

"No, I'm not." She could finally smile easily. "But that might be easier for you to accept than the truth."

"Okay, now I'm really curious." He pulled her to stand in the circle of his arms. "So what do we do now?"

"Can you give me some time?"

"All you want." She saw his sly smile. "Within reason. How long do you think you'll need?"

"You said something about dinner tomorrow...?"

He blinked in surprise. "Sure. Come on over whenever you're ready." Distressingly, he saw tears in her eyes again. "Anna." He feathered a kiss over her lips.

"Jack. I..." She had to stop, before she revealed too much, too soon. "I don't deserve you."

"I think that's supposed to be my line."

Anna linked her arms around his neck and rested her head on his chest. She felt him rub his cheek over her hair in an expected gesture. Her sigh was contented - _she hadn't messed things up yet_. "You can say it next time."

"It's a deal."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jack's biceps protested as he pushed himself through another rep on the weight machine he'd set up in his spare bedroom. The bedroom that Anna had helped him paint and furnish. Once she'd discovered the little used room and the fact that his friends often ended up sleeping on the couch or the floor, she'd nagged him until he'd agreed to remedy the situation.

The trip to the home improvement store should have been excruciating. Standing around being hounded by an overly-enthusiastic clerk, surrounded by thousands of little colored slips of paper, trying to decide on just the right shade of cream for the walls of a room he never intended to use himself. Instead, it had been another example of something that was fun to do with Anna. She made everything fun.

He moved around the side of the machine and set the weight pin in place on the next exercise in his routine. Sitting down, his feet found the pedals and he pushed down. His abused knee made a grating sound that he ignored as he continued the leg presses.

What he couldn't ignore anymore was the way he felt about Anna. They'd eventually settled on 'Vanilla Latte' for the walls, and somewhere between the taping, cutting in and rolling, he'd realized he'd fallen in love with her.

He even knew the exact moment. He'd made one of his typical smart ass remarks - _probably about the paint color_ - and she'd looked up at him, paint smeared across her cheek, and smiled. Just that. Just a smile. And he'd gone face first. Splat! Not even a knee jerk reaction to stop himself.

He hadn't even wanted to. It was crazy. He had to be out of his mind. Certifiable, looney, wacky, deranged, touched. And he'd been telling himself that for some time now. But he was in love with her, so wildly in love that he couldn't get through an hour without thinking about her. Without wishing for her. Without imagining that maybe, somehow, it could work.

And if that wasn't the most irrational thought he'd ever had, he wasn't sure what was. The whole business was just... Crazy. _What the hell was he thinking of?_

_Her_, he realized, letting the weights clang home abruptly. _He was always thinking of her._

Sighing, he ripped off his T-shirt and buried his face in the sweaty cotton. It was eating a hole in him that he couldn't tell her, couldn't even talk to her, about his work. It made him feel guilty the way his feelings for Carter didn't. After Sarah, he'd vowed he'd never get involved with a woman that he couldn't share his whole life with. It just wasn't fair. To her or to him.

But here he was, in exactly that situation. Caught between the work he loved and the woman he loved. Something was going to have to give, soon, or he was pretty sure that, given a choice, he'd retire for the third and final time whether she asked him to or not.

_Hell, he'd probably dance naked on the moon if she asked him to._

With that image seared into his brain he went to take a shower. He dropped his clothes in the hamper - another Anna addition - and stepped under the hot spray.

_Okay_, he thought with the water beating down on his head, _retirement wasn't so bad, really_. He'd already tried it twice and, really, aside from the utter boredom, it hadn't been so bad. He reached for the soap, lathered up.

They'd have a lot more time to spend together. His place. Her place. At his cabin in Minnesota. Maybe she'd like to tour, go out on the road. She was talented enough, beautiful enough, she'd be wildly popular. If that was what she wanted.

He ducked back under the water._ That was the crux of the matter, wasn't it. _He wasn't sure what she wanted. He wasn't even sure she loved him back and here he was, blissfully planning their future. He snapped the water off and reached for a towel, sure he'd gone absolutely bonkers.

_And what was with this secret thingy she had to tell him about, anyway?_

Since he'd left her last night he'd run through various possible scenarios. Even some wildly improbable ones. Everything from "Well, Jack, I'm really a lesbian" to her being the secret love child of Elvis. He gave a dismissive snort at his image in the mirror and headed into the bedroom to search for clean clothes.

Nothing really played true. She could have some major disease maybe. Or she could have done something illegal, but that probably would have popped on his computer search. He couldn't imagine anything - from this world anyway - that could be so bad. There just wasn't any secret she could tell him that would make him even think about leaving her.

He caught himself staring out his bedroom window, watching for her, and tried to shake off his ominous mood. _Well, he'd find out soon enough. _Not one to dwell on an unpleasant task, he grabbed up the Sunday paper and a beer, and headed out to the sunshine on his deck.

Anna parked her car in the street and resolutely headed for Jack's front door. Her courage, which had carried her this far, deserted her when she lifted her hand to knock.

_What in the world was she doing? _she thought, not for the first, or even the fortieth, time. How was it that she was about to give her complete trust to a man she'd only known a few months?

Hadn't she learned that people didn't last in her life? That there were no happily-ever-afters? Not for her. Her hand fell to her side.

She had friends, acquaintances, people she knew, that she felt close to, people she went out and did things with, but she'd learned through painful experience not to let her involvement with others move beyond a natural friendliness.

She knew them, these friends of hers, but they didn't know her. Couldn't know her. Her training and her experience told her that. There were precious few who could accept what was out of the ordinary. The price of being who she was, and having what she had, was being alone. Even among those who did know her, she was apart. Separate. Isolated. Segregated.

Still, it had never particularly bothered her to be alone. To go her own way. What she had told Jack so many weeks ago had been nothing but the truth. She'd been content. Not looking for or wanting anything - anyone - more.

She'd made herself a promise the day she'd walked out of her former life. A promise that she would be only who she wanted to be, once she found out who that was. A promise she'd realized and kept for a long time.

Then a man had walked into her comfortable little life. A man she shared no common ground with, but who had showed her exactly what was missing. A man who'd ignited a spark that had changed everything. It hadn't mattered that she was intelligent, successful, independent. Simply by existing, Jack O'Neill had altered the scope and pattern of her life.

Fate had brought her here, in this place and this time. The same fate that had brought her to this man. This taciturn, physical man who held both serenity and violence inside him. A man who would bring serenity and violence into her life. She needed no seer to tell her that.

The question now was whether she was strong enough to deal with the consequences of revealing herself to him. If he could accept her for who she was, then her prize could be a lifetime of happiness. That vision of her future seemed too good to be meant for her. If he couldn't, it would mean the complete loss of her current life. Anna Jordan would have to disappear. Tonight. She would have to leave everything she'd built here and never return.

Anna paced the walk in front of Jack's door. _What was she doing? Why hadn't she stopped herself from falling in love with him? _Again, as all through the long night, there was no coherent answer. She closed her eyes a moment, trying to pull herself together, knowing what the answer was, finally forcing herself to accept it.

She couldn't have stopped it, and wouldn't have if she'd realized it was happening in the first place. It had been too late, much too late, from that first drink, that first conversation. Love was the strongest and truest of magics, and if she loved unwisely, at least she had felt it, pure and sweet, once in her life.

At one time, in the darkest time, she'd thought love wasn't inside her to feel or to give to a man. Yet she couldn't deny that because of Jack O'Neill she did. That was a priceless gift he had given her, a piece of herself. Because of that, she would not regret what fate and love brought to her after today. The consequences of the truth would be lived with, because the alternative was living a lie.

With renewed resolve, Anna returned to the door and raised her fist to knock. And nearly screamed when the door jerked open first.

"Hi!" Jack said, putting a hand on her arm to steady her when she jumped back. "I thought I heard a car drive up."

"Yes. I..." She indicated her car at the curb over her shoulder, struggling to adjust her intentions faced with the reality of Jack O'Neill.

"Come on in." He stood aside and let her enter. He wanted to grab her, and hold her, and tell her that whatever it was she had to tell him, it didn't matter. Instead, he made polite small talk and hated himself. "Do you want something to drink?" He gestured with the beer bottle he held. "Or there's some wine left over from dinner."

"The wine sounds lovely." She made a move towards the kitchen before he stopped her.

"I'll get it. Why don't you go out on the deck."

Leaving him to it, she moved through the house towards the back. The fact was, she needed the few extra seconds to gather her thoughts, to step out in the warming sun and consider her options.

The deck wrapped around the end of Jack's house was currently wreathed in dappled light. Growing up in distinctly urban New York, Anna had found she liked the trees of her adopted state. They gave shade and an illusion of privacy that she treasured. There was the murmur of the creek that tumbled close by, as well. Running her fingers along the rail, she chose a seat on the corner bench and tried to calm her mind.

It was how he saw he when he came out of the house. A beautiful woman in a sunbeam yellow dress, curled up on the worn wood, the sunlight spangling her hair, her face thrown back to the clear, blue sky. He realized that looking at her was becoming a habit he wasn't sure he could break. Desire was a hard fist in his stomach. Love, a nervous undercurrent in his mind. It was only with an effort that he pushed both aside to concentrate on here and now.

"Here." He handed her the crystal glass of wine red as blood and retreated to the other side of the paper-strewn table. The silence stretched, broken only by the liquid call of the birds.

Anna sipped at her wine, trying to find the words to begin. To tell him what he deserved to know. She wasn't up for the brash way. It wasn't her. And the subtle, round-about approach wouldn't work with Jack. Ditto for any intellectual or scientific explanation. Maybe a practical demonstration would be best for the literal-minded Jack O'Neill.

"Anna. You don't have to be nervous about telling me anything."

She turned her head to see his profile. "You do understand me, don't you."

"Some." He tried to shrug casually and just felt his shoulders tense up, as if to receive a blow. "We don't have to do this now. I can live with a little mystery in my life. Hell, I can live with a lot of it if--"

"I love you, Jack."

The rest of what he'd been about to say came out in a wheez. "Haaah. Okay. Ah..."

Conversely, his obvious confusion steadied her. "I love you. That's why I have to tell you that I'm not what you think I am." She took one more sip of wine to ease the tightness in her throat before putting the glass aside. "You only know a part of me."

He fought the flutter of panic. "I know what I need to know." He stood to pace. "I know you're passionate. And compassionate. That you're loyal, and generous, and openhearted. That you like romantic music and shiny rocks. I know what your laugh sounds like, what your perfume smells like. I know I'm happier with you than I am anywhere else."

From Jack, that was nearly an admission of love. She had to tell him now, so that he would have the choice to accept or to back away. She closed her eyes on a sigh. "I told you I'm a coward."

"I'll believe anything you tell me but that."

"We'll see." She pressed her lips together. "Can you believe that there are some who are more sensitive than others to strong thoughts and feelings? Who have... a little something extra. Call it a well-developed talent, or a gift. People - people just like you - who live, and work, and have families with bills to pay and groceries to buy, but that many people - far too many people - would consider the ultimate in evil."

He pushed back his impatience and tried for a smile. "Are you getting all supernatural on me?"

She laughed nervously, and pressed a hand to her eyes. "You don't know the half of it. I need to explain and I don't know how. There's a word I could use, a label, a name, but it might do more harm than good." Rising, she began to wander the deck, Jack watching her warily.

Going with instinct, she went to the barbecue and raised the lid. There were some half burned coals and pieces of mesquite from their last cook-out. "Watch, Jack. This is an ancient skill. The first to be mastered and the last to be lost with age."

She felt the cool, clean power flow through her as she focused on the dry wood.

"I don't know what you're..." His words trailed off as she stood in front of the grill, her palms turned down. His blood turned to ice when he saw her eyes glow with power and fire flash from her palms to light the remnants.

"How the hell did you do that?" So. There was one thing that could tear them apart. The muscles in his stomach twanged like harp strings. _How had he missed it? How could she be one of them and he totally miss seeing it?_

"A child's trick. A certain kind of child."

Very slowly, he shook his head. His fingers balled into fists at his sides. He pushed aside his feelings for her and focused on survival. "Bull. That's just bull."

"Something else then. Something simple. Maybe you need a drink." The glass of wine she'd left on the table rose slowly in the air to float serenely over to him, where it hovered at eye level.

This was something new. None of the Goa'uld he'd seen had that much control. It was either blasting him into a wall, or sucking his mind out of his head. Nothing this - elegant. Nothing that required this delicacy or skill. _How much more would she show him?_ "I don't think I'm thirsty."

"Well, then. Let me think." The glass settled into her hand and she took a fortifying swallow before sending it floating back to the table. She walked to the center of his deck and stood, closed her eyes, raised her hands.

In that moment, she was simply a woman. A beautiful woman standing on his deck with her arms lifted gracefully. Then she changed. He watched her change right in front of his eyes. Her beauty deepened. _The setting sun_, he told himself, _that's all it was_. She smiled, her full lips curving, her lashes shadowing her cheeks, her hair tumbling wildly down her back.

_No, it was moving. _Fluttering gently at first, as though a playful breeze had swept across the deck. Then it was flying, around her face, back from her face, in a long gorgeous stream. The pages of the Sunday paper began to tremble and shift across the table towards her. The rush of wind increased intensity. A sprinkling of dry leaves was sucked up with the papers, whirling around in a tornado centered on Anna.

But there was no wind to blow. The day was utterly calm. The trees on the opposite banks of the stream weren't even quivering. Yet he felt it. It chilled his skin, whipping up goosebumps. He could hear the roar of it as the wind and debris circled Anna madly.

She stood straight and still. A faint light shivered around her as her eyes began to glow again, golden and eerie and familiar. Her eyes met his through the gale and he thought he heard chanting. As the sun beamed down, soft flakes of snow began to fall. Out of thin air. They swirled around his head and skittered cold as spiders over his cheeks.

"That's enough." He barked in his cadet training voice. "You've made your point."

She lowered her arms and the miniature blizzard stopped as if it had never been. The wind silenced and died, papers and leaves wilted to the deck. When she looked at him, his expression wasn't what she'd thought to see. Surprise, yes. Suspicion, disbelief. Maybe a bit of panic. Not the cold anger that made his face a mask of stone, his eyes the calculating eyes of a predator.

She'd known he could be dangerous. The man she stared at now had stripped off all the easygoing charm and good-natured humor. This man was capable of quick and bloodless violence.

"What exactly was that?" His tone was flat and gelid. His temper strained.

"A very basic call to the elements." She hadn't expected him to be so ruthless, so angry. It wasn't a typical reaction. Nor had she expected how much it would hurt to have him look at her with that ice-edged, impersonal fury. She folded her hands in front of her and tried to figure out how to ride through a more intimidating storm.

He narrowed his eyes as he studied her. Her eyes were wistful, and if he didn't know better, he would have said she looked hurt, even vulnerable. If he didn't know better. And he did. After all, she'd just called up a blizzard in August. It had to be an act. She had to know she was the next thing to being invulnerable. "Is that what you call it?"

She tried a small, amused smile. "What would you call it?"

"I'd call it a Goa'uld showing off. At least do me the favor of dropping the act." He didn't pace, thought he wanted to. He had to keep his wits now, or he'd be dead. Or worse. "You've been leading me on the whole time. It has just been one long game to you, hasn't it? Right from the beginning." _God, it hurt_, he realized. It hurt to think of everything he'd felt for her, everything he'd wished for. "How long have you been hiding out on Earth? Which System Lord is holding your leash?"

Her heart quivered in her breast, but she kept her voice strong by sheer will. "I don't know what you mean. What's a System Lord? I showed you what I am, I didn't hide it, I can't deny it. I won't. It's no game, it's my life."

The sense of betrayal was huge. _Damn it, he loved her. _A Goa'uld had made him fall in love with her. A trick. A drug. That had to be it. Like with Hathor. No way he would be able to love a Goa'uld.

"I've been through this before, you know. With Hathor? You might recognize the name." He circled her, careful not to get too close. Hopefully, Good old Doc Frasier could find out what chemicals were floating around in him and neutralize them.

"She's an Egyptian goddess. But I don't see what this has to do with--"

"No, you wouldn't, would you." He slammed the lid shut, extinguishing the happily burning barbecue. He began to have a glimmer of a plan. "She's dead, you know. She wasn't immortal."

"No one's immortal." She was beginning to think he'd come mentally unhinged. As to why, she didn't have a clue. "Even people like me. We eat and sleep. We bleed when you cut us. We grow old and die. Just like you."

"You're not like me." He bit the words off, casually maneuvering back towards the bench she'd been sitting on.

"No. You're right. I'm different, and there's nothing I can do to change that. Nothing I would do. If you're finding this, me, too difficult to accept, then let me go." Grief rolled through her, sharp and hard and familiar, at the thought.

"Oh, no. No way you're leaving here." Almost there. Just another second or two.

"Jack," she tried one more time to reason with him. To reach him. To buy some time. "I'm sorry if I've misread what was happening between us. You know I'm not very good at social situations. Maybe we should both take some time and think things through."

"I think we've taken enough time." He reached adroitly under the bench seat for the pistol he'd kept there since Maybourne's unexpected visit several years ago. "I think I'm through thinking."

Anna stared in astonishment down the barrel of the small handgun pointed directly at her.

Astonishment quickly turned to annoyance. "Put that away. I'm no threat to you, Jack."

"Not yet. I'm waiting for the real you to rear it's ugly, snakey head." Keeping the gun steady, he dug in his pocket for his cell phone. He punched the number for the SGC. "Yeah. O'Neill, S G One Niner dash Delta 8, security code 6703. Yeah. I need a containment unit at my residence A.S.A.P. We've got a live one for the research boys at last."

Anna's annoyance chilled abruptly to fear. This was a much more typical response. One she should have anticipated given his profession. Well, she'd disappeared before, she could do so again. "This has gone far enough. I'm leaving now, Jack. Don't try and follow me. You won't find me again."

"Just stay where you are." When she continued walking toward the sliding door, he fired a warning shot into the siding above her head. "I told you, you're not leaving."

She looked at the hole in the siding calmly before turning to him. He took her arrogant, confident smile as final evidence of the Goa'uld inside her. "You can't stop me."

Jack felt the gun ripped out of his hand. Like the glass of wine, it hovered a foot from his nose, pointed at him. He spread his hands to his sides in a show of submission. "We'll see."

With a lightening quick move, he spun away from the gun towards Anna. He had just enough time to register her surprise before his fist connected with her jaw. Both she and the gun hit the deck, literally, at the same time. Jack pancaked himself alongside the unconscious woman to avoid the discharged bullet.

He levered himself to his hands and knees, biting back a groan of discomfort. Kneeling, he studied Anna, lying crumpled on the gray wooden boards. "Damn it. Damn it all to hell."

Because in spite of everything, he still loved her.

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	4. Transpositions Changes in the Key of Li...

They had gathered in the observation lounge above the isolation ward. Anna was lying below, sedated into unconsciousness and security strapped to the gurney. She'd been the subject of intense examination by the top-notch SGC medical staff since Jack had brought her in.

"I'm sorry, Sir, but I don't think she can be a Goa'uld. I sat right next to her and didn't feel a thing." Carter stated.

"I did not sense the presence of a symbiote, either, O'Neill." Teal'c's typically laconic comment supported his teammate.

"Then you're both wrong." Jack watched the nurse move around below, removing the various leads and IV's from Anna. He stamped down hard on the guilt at the bloom of a massive bruise on her cheek. "I'm telling you, she had the whole glowy eye thing, and fire came out of her hands and lit my barbecue."

"Maybe the symbiote is immature and not able to take over completely. Or maybe she was a host previously." Daniel started. "You know, like Sam, or that woman on Cimmeria, Kendra. Both of them still could use Goa'uld technology without a resident symbiote."

"As far as I could see, she wasn't using any technology."

"No ribbon device?" Sam perked up.

"Nothing. Her hands were bare. Not even a ring on her finger. Could they have implanted it somehow?"

"I don't think so, Sir. It's a fairly large device. There wouldn't be any room to implant it so that no one else would notice it."

General Hammond had let the discussion wind around the question enough. "If she's not a Goa'uld, then what is she?"

"Well, General, I don't know what she is, but I can tell you what she's not." The petite Doctor Janet Frasier, Chief Medical Officer of Stargate Command, came into the lounge and joined the group, carrying a thick file. At the General's gesture she continued. "She's definitely not a Goa'uld." She waved away Colonel O'Neill's protests. "There's no evidence of a symbiote, immature or otherwise, anywhere in her body. Nor does her blood carry the protein marker that would indicate that the symbiote died. As far as I can tell, she's a normal human female, in excellent health."

"Normal human females can't light up my barbecue with their hands, Doc."

Dr. Frasier nodded, her pretty brown hair bobbing around her face. "You're right. I do have a theory, but it's kind of out there."

"We'll listen to just about anything at this point, Doctor." General Hammond settled into one of the two uncomfortable plastic chairs available.

Doctor Frasier sat in the other chair and maneuvered it to the computer console. "I was following up on a hunch, Sir, and it just happened to bring up some interesting coincidences." She began taping out instructions on the keyboard, SG-1 and her commanding officer looking on. "Her chromosomal DNA is normal, as are all of the other standards tests that would be run under routine circumstances."

"So what's not normal?" Jack glanced over the reports that had appeared on the monitor. As far as he could tell, which wasn't very far, Anna checked out.

"Well, Sir, we have a new test that we've just started using, and I wanted to try it out. It shows a person's mitochondrial DNA."

"Mita-what-i-call?"

"Mitochondrial. If chromosomal DNA can tell us who you are, then mitochondrial DNA shows us where you came from. It's very ancient, one of the more primitive leftovers in modern humans. It's only passed down through the mother's bloodline, so it remains fairly uncorrupted. It's been used frequently in the past few years to trace tribal subgroups in Africa and Asia to try and determine how ancient hominids spread."

"And what does this tell us about Anna Jordan, Doctor?" General Hammond moved the doctor back to more practical matters.  
  
"This is a readout of Ms. Jordan's mitochondrial DNA." A window popped open on the screen showing the bars of a DNA report. "Because it looked familiar, I asked the computer to do a search for matches in our database." A few more taps brought up another window beside the first. "It came up with one match."

"Whose?" Sam moved until her nose was inches from the screen. The two reports looked very similar.

"This one is from Ayiana." Sam met Janet's eyes in surprise.

"Ayiana." Daniel began. That was one of the adventures SG-1 had participated in while he was ascended. "Isn't that the woman that was found frozen in the ice down in Antarctica?"

"Yeah. In a vein of ice that was 50,000 years old." Sam looked back at the screen. "How close a match is it."

"The computer puts it at over 90 percent." Janet and Sam shared another astonished look. "I don't have to tell you how incredible that is."

"I'm afraid you'll have to tell me, Doctor." The General looked from one woman to the other for an answer.

"Sir, that's an incredibly high percentage, almost a perfect match. It would indicate that Anna was a direct descendant. Ancestrally speaking it means that Anna came from the same tribe, maybe even the same family, as Ayiana."

"That's impossible." _No way. _Jack couldn't even believe she was 40 years old, let alone... Well, it was just impossible.

"And how often have we seen the impossible prove not only possible but actual, Sir?" Sam put in. "Janet, do you know what you're suggesting?"

"I'm not through yet. Look at this." She tapped again and an EKG strip and a colored picture of a brain appeared. "This is Ms. Jordan's EKG and PET scans. I had the computer search again for matches."

"Ayiana again?" Sam couldn't wait to see the results.

"Not only Ayiana." Dr. Frasier input the command and the screen split into four segments, each showing an EKG and colored picture of a brain. "As you can see, the electrical readings are very similar. And the scans of brain activity as well." She pointed out identical blips and dips and colored blobs in each pane. "This one is Ms. Jordan's, and this one is Ayiana's." She tapped the screen on the other two. "These two I didn't expect."

"Who are they, Doctor?" General Hammond was leaning forward, scanning the monitor.

"Well, Sir, this one here," she pointed to the bottom left hand window, "This is Cassie's, when she was going through Nirrti's coming-of-age virus. If you recall, she had some similar abilities to what Colonel O'Neill described Anna as having."

"Nirrti was trying to create a hok'tar, a super human, to be her next host." Teal'c put in. "A host with such powers would be of incalculable value to the Goa'uld."

"Powers used for purely evil purposes. Maybe the hok'tar that Nirrti was trying to create was a human with abilities like the Ancients. Abilities like Anna Jordan's." Dr. Frasier shrugged.

"Janet, do you know what you're suggesting?" Sam was following her friend's thought processes to a likely conclusion.

"That she's a descendant of the Ancients. An actual hok'tar. Human, but with something we don't have. Abilities we've lost, or never had in the first place. Because this last set of scans," Dr. Frasier indicated the last window, "Is Colonel O'Neill's, when he had the Ancient repository downloaded into him. When his brain capacity was working beyond its normal level."

"Mine?" Jack took a closer look at the various sets of readings. He might not be able to make sense of the medical information, but even he could see that Anna's scans and his matched that of Cassie and Ayiana in nearly every aspect.

"But Jack didn't have any extra sensory abilities that he describes Anna as having." Daniel pointed out. "It was all just added intelligence."

"Maybe because he didn't have those extra talents to begin with. It could only work within the framework of Colonel O'Neill's brain." Sam theorized, her mind, though an ordinary human one, working a mile a minute on the possibilities. "Or maybe we didn't give the download enough time to reprogram him."  
  
Teal'c added. "The aliens on P3X-367, whom Nirrti manipulated with her gene resequencer, also possessed what you call extra sensory abilities, O'Neill. Again, much as you ascribe to Anna Jordan."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Right there. First she's some descendant of a 50,000 year old popsicle - who nearly got us all killed by the way - and now your saying she's some ESP freak." Jack threw up his hands and paced to the window to look down on the unconscious woman. "I know her. She's not like that. She's..." He trailed off.

"Colonel," Dr. Frasier came to stand by him, also looking down on Anna. "From what you said of your last encounter, you don't really know what she is, since you never let her tell you." Janet didn't flinch at the Colonel's hostile stare. "I suggest you ask her. And listen to her answer."

Colonel O'Neill turned back to the window, but not before Dr. Frasier had seen that she'd won her point. "I've discontinued her sedation. The way her body metabolizes foreign substances, she should be awake very shortly. You should be there when she wakes up, Colonel. She'll be disoriented, and a familiar face will help."

Jack doubted if his face was going to help anything. He did know Anna, and he was pretty sure that his face was not going to be on the top of her happy list any time soon. But he followed Dr. Frasier to the iso-ward, taking his place beside the bed. A glance over his shoulder showed Daniel, Teal'c, Carter, and General Hammond watching the show through the observation window.

She was pale, the livid bruise from his punch standing out in sharp relief. Tape held swatches of cotton to the inside of each elbow, where the techs had drawn blood. The straps still held her arms and ankles captive to the table. _No, she wasn't going to be happy to see him at all._

Dr. Frasier had been right on the money. In only a few minutes, Anna began to stir. Her eyelids flickered, her head moved fretfully, she moaned in feeble protest. The small sound ate at his conscience. This was his fault. Somehow, some way, he had to make this right with her. Even if it meant losing her.

_Though somehow, some way, he had to find a way to keep her._

"Jack?" Her voice was thin, barely heard.

"Yeah. I'm here. It's all right." _Ha ha. Like that was the truth._

"Why'm I so sleepy? What's happened to me?" The green eyes were glazed, confused.

"It's okay. Nothing's wrong. I'm right here, you don't have to be afraid." He was optimistic when she returned the pressure of his fingers, weaving them together.

"What happened?" She was rapidly regaining her bearings, faster than Jack thought possible.

"We were at your house, in the sunshine. We were talking."

"Yeah. We were talking. We should keep doing that." He hoped to get over the rough parts before she was fully conscious. "You were going to tell me something."

"I went to your house." She repeated. "My face hurts. Why does it..." She tried to raise her hand to the pain, and couldn't due to the security strap. "Why am I tied up? What's going..."

Jack could actually see her eyes clear, her memory snap into place. "Jack." She said flatly, with no trace of warmth that he could detect.

"It's all right, Anna, really. Here let me..." He was reaching to undo the buckle when he suddenly found himself flying through the air. He ended up spread-eagled against the observation window. The pounding of feet leaving the lounge behind him told him the troops were coming to his rescue.

"Don't touch me."_ Oh, yeah. She was back. All the way back. _"Don't ever touch me again."

"Not a problem." He strangled out. It felt like he was pulling six G's coming out of a bombing run. Anna apparently had no problem multi-tasking - which he was grateful for - since she was able to keep him firmly up against the glass while the security straps unbuckled themselves.

The two guards stationed outside the iso-ward ran in, guns raised. "No. Don't shoot!" Jack managed a loud croak. Damn him, if he couldn't figure out who he wanted to protect more, Anna or the two MP's.

"Sir?" The first guard questioned, never taking his eyes, or the muzzle of his pistol, from Anna.  
  
"Don't shoot! Get out, Sargent!" He saw the man's eyes waver in indecision with the obvious threat to his superior officer. "That's an order. Get the hell out of this room. Right now!"

The two guards exchanged a look and slowly backed out of the room, weapons at alert. Their place was taken by General Hammond, who reinforced the Colonel's command, and Daniel,

Carter, Teal'c, and Dr. Frasier. When they tried to advance into the room, Anna raised a hand in a halt gesture. Her eyes blazed gold and the ones leading the group, Daniel and General Hammond, stopped cold as they ran into an invisible wall.

"Stay away from me. All of you, just keep away." Jack wasn't sure what she was going to do. He had no idea how powerful she was, or how desperate. He did discover she wasn't as recovered as she seemed. For a second only, he felt the pressure on his body release as Anna's knees buckled and she leaned heavily on the gurney. She regained control almost immediately and he was pressed back into the glass.

"Anna. Let me down from here. Let me explain."

"Explain? You can explain this?" Anna gestured around the room and clenched the fabric of the hospital gown she wore in her fist. "You can explain punching me unconscious, kidnapping me, keeping me drugged and tied up, performing Goddess knows what kinds of test on me? You can explain that, Jack?"

"Please, Ms. Jordan," Dr. Frasier stepped forward until she could feel the invisible barrier. As used as she was to emotional glares, she had to steel herself from taking a step back when Anna swung around to stab her with a green-eyed sword. "I'm-"

"Janet Frasier, the doctor in charge here. Yes, I know."

Janet looked for support from her commanding officer, General Hammond and only got a confused look in return. _How did she know that? _"We... We didn't do anything invasive - some blood tests, some scans. That was all."

"That was all?" Anna closed her eyes on more despair.

"Anna." Jack tested her strength by flexing his hands, his shoulders. They could move, and he could speak freely, the intense pressure easing to a feeling of cotton batting. Oh, he was stuck there all right, twenty feet off the floor, but at least he wasn't being mashed flat anymore. "Just give me a chance."

"You had your chance. Colonel." The look that was directed his way was bleak. Not cold, not heated, but utterly empty. By the way she said his rank instead of his name, he knew he was in pretty deep doo doo.

"Ms. Jordan," General Hammond began, "We had to make sure you weren't compromised."

She gave a humorless laugh. "Compromised. Is that what you call it?"

"Ms. Jordan. Anna." Daniel stepped up to the barrier. "We had to make sure you weren't a Goa'uld."

"And now you know I'm not a - Goa'uld, whatever that is, so I think I'm going to leave now."

She raised her hands, which began to glow as power poured through her. A growing wind sliced through the doorway to spiral around her.

Jack winced. He couldn't predict what was coming, only that it wasn't going to be pretty.

"Wait!" Daniel jumped at the barrier, flattening his hands against the invisible wall. "Anna. Please. Don't go yet. Don't you want to know why this happened?"

As she looked at him with eerily gilded eyes and a calm other-worldly voice from the middle of a tornado. "No."

Daniel, who was well-used to weirdness, was unnerved. Even more so when Anna gave a wild yell and punched her fist upwards. Power fountained in a golden stream to explode against the ceiling. Concrete and steel, pulverized to dust and small pieces, rained down.

Everybody ducked under the nearest cover, though Daniel noticed the debris was contained behind the barrier, and that he and the rest of his team were never in any danger.

Anna was a statue as the dust settled, her fist in the air, her look now one of astonishment. The room itself was utterly quiet, alarms and shouts echoed from what seemed like very far away.

Daniel and the others crawled out from under the various tables and counters and stood watching her.  
  
She could see the hole she'd made in the ceiling through four feet of concrete, and the ceiling of the storage room above. The ceiling above that was crumbling to reveal yet another floor.

Frightened faces, starkly white, appeared in the openings. A quick probe straight up didn't reveal sky as far as she could sense, and fortunately, no injuries. Her eyes dropped to Daniel's. "Where am I?"

"Twenty-eight floors underneath Cheyenne Mountain." With another blaze of gold, Daniel felt a wave pass through him, into him. "You can probably blast your way out of here. But not without hurting anyone."

He was telling the truth. And more. What she saw in his mind, and the minds of his friends, was too fantastic to believe. "Why do you think I care?"

"Because I don't think you're that type of person." When she didn't respond, Daniel tried another tack. "Haven't you been curious about what Jack does for the Air Force? Wouldn't you like to know what this is all about?"

"My curiosity about Colonel O'Neill's occupation isn't what it used to be." Anna ignored the subject of her comment, still hanging on the window. Daniel thought she looked remarkably at ease for someone who'd just smashed her way through twelve solid feet of concrete construction.

"I would like to know what a man with doctoral degrees in archeology and anthropology is doing working for the Air Force."

"Well," Daniel stalled, _how did she know that_? Given the clues from the last few minutes, he deduced that she must somehow be reading their minds. "It's kind of a long story. And we'll tell it to you." He assured her as her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "But first, we'd really like to know what you were going to tell Jack."

"Tell Colonel O'Neill about what?"

"He said you were going to tell him what you are. He said you told him there was a name, a label, you could use, but that it had a stigma attached to it. We'd really like to know what that name is."

"If you think I'm going to tell you after this, your doctoral degrees must not be worth very much."

Sam stepped forward to join in the persuasion. "It's very important. It could mean an answer to questions about the evolution of humans on Earth." Sam swayed, and was supported by Teal'c, unaware that her weakness was caused by Anna probing her mind.

"Anna Jordan." Teal'c joined his teammates at the barrier line. "Your information could mean freedom and peace for many people, including my own. A cause for which Colonel O'Neill has fought for many years."

"Ah... Excuse me. Colonel O'Neill is right here." Now that he knew what a fly on the wall felt like, he didn't much care for it. He wanted down on his own two feet again.

"Ms. Jordan, I think your point has been made." General Hammond spoke from the back of the group but Anna didn't doubt who was in charge. He indicated his officer behind her, Anna didn't turn to look. Didn't need to. "If you don't mind."

"Oh, but I do, General. I mind deception very much." Anna crossed her arms and prepared to stand her ground. She could keep him up there for a very long time.

"Hey!" Jack insisted. "I don't think I'm the only one who was covering something up around here."

Because it was true, Anna had to accept that accusation. She did turn then, to look at him. To try and harden her heart enough not to hurt. But it wasn't possible. Her heart still loved. All she had left to salve her pride was the pretense of indifference. She turned away without speaking to him and negligently waved a hand over her shoulder. "Very well."

Jack fell like a stone. He had enough time to cover his face with his arms and to fervently hope he wouldn't break anything Doc Frasier couldn't fix. His fall halted abruptly a few inches from the floor. So close, his panting stirred the dust.

He was whipped up and to his feet as invisible hands brush him off none too gently. At the same time, Anna's barrier disappeared and Daniel, who'd been leaning against it, fell forward a step.

Everyone cautiously advanced closer to Anna, who watched them with apparent unconcern.

Jack joined his teammates and exchanged a glance with Daniel that carried a whole conversation. This was Daniel's deal now. Anna wouldn't listen or respond to him, so Daniel had to take the lead.  
  
Daniel stepped away from the group, closer to Anna, arms outstretched to show he meant no harm. "Anna. Tell us what you call yourself."

Anna considered a number of factors in the silence after: Her safety, her belief in her own powers, the necessity that had meant keeping a secret for a thousand years. She was already on bad terms with the Council. What more could they do to her if they found out she'd broken one of their oldest laws?

Anna stalled. "This isn't just my secret, Dr. Jackson. There are a lot of people who could be hurt, or worse, if it was known how they're... different."

"I give you my word." Daniel tried to project trust from his mind, sure that somehow Anna would pick up on his thoughts.

"Your word. What about theirs?" She indicated the military uniforms in the room.

"Oh, for crying out loud, Anna. It's not like we can't keep a secret around here." Jack said in exasperation worsened by the knowledge that it was him she didn't trust anymore.

Anna sighed deeply and retreated a few steps. There really wasn't anything else she could do. She wanted out of here, but more, she _was_ fascinated by images and thoughts she'd gleaned from them. And she was, against her will, curious about exactly what Jack O'Neill did for a living.

Staring at the hole she'd made above her, she took a big risk. "I'm a witch."

She didn't need to read their minds, the stunned silence told her all she needed to know. Behind her, the others exchanged looks of surprise and doubt.

Per standard procedure, it was Colonel O'Neill who voiced his scepticism first. "So. Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?" But Anna still wouldn't look at him.

"Don't mock me, Colonel." She threw over her shoulder. "You know as well as I that power has no morality until it's used."

Daniel was on solid ground now. "You mean you're a follower of the Wiccan religion?"

"Not exactly." It was amusing, in a bizarre way. "I'm a _practitioner_ of the Way. My powers are hereditary, passed from mother to daughter, generation to generation, back to the healer Dion Cecht and the time of Danu, the mother of us all."

"Dee-on Ket? Dan-oo?" General Hammond questioned Daniel.

"Danu, the supreme Celtic deity, head of the Tuatha de Danaan. She was the mother of all the other Celtic gods, including Dion Cecht, in much the same way as Zeus was either brother or father to the Greek Gods, or Ra was the head of the Egyptians'." Daniel's encyclopedic knowledge came in handy. "It was said that they originally lived on islands to the West and came to Ireland on a cloud. It's also said that they still protect their people as invisible beings, and that they fight beside them in just battles with lances of blue flame and shields of white light." Daniel gave his teammates a significant look. It was a familiar description.

Sam stepped forward, eager to explore a new puzzle. "You said hereditary powers. What else can you do besides... what did you call it?" She glanced at Colonel O'Neill at the rear of the group to bring his words to mind. "Calling the elements, or..." She gestured upward to the significant destruction above.

"My temper." Anna regretted her outburst, but still, it was hard not to feel a small niggle of satisfaction at the scope of the damage she'd caused. "The Council classifies me as a high level empath, but there are always other aspects to one's talents."

Jack couldn't let that one go by. "You have classifications? And a Council?"

"There are a great many of us, Colonel, from many countries, with their own governing bodies. We have moved with the times." Anna shrugged. "Empaths, healers, spell casters, herbalists, those who have a special affinity for growing things, telekinetics, telepaths. And many others."

"Telepaths." At least she'd answered him. But Jack didn't really care to have anybody stirring around in his head. "If you can read minds, why are you surprised by all this?" He gestured at the SGC around them. "Haven't you known for weeks from reading my mind?"

"Telepathy isn't my primary gift, Colonel. I have only a limited ability in that area. And even a top level telepath would not be able to read your mind." She'd known she couldn't ignore him for long.

"You mean anybody's mind, or only Jack's?" Daniel, too, found himself fascinated by the concept Anna was spreading before them.

Anna had to be amused again. She'd never thought she'd be explaining this to people who not only weren't witches, but were part of the military establishment so hated and feared by her own people.

"Everyone has two parts to their conscious mind, Dr. Jackson. The public part that works when you're talking or concentrating. I can read the feelings and specific thoughts in a person's public mind, but that's not much more than a skilled reader of body language can do." She began.

Anna folded her hands in front of her as Daniel moved closer. "A person's private mind holds those thoughts and feelings that aren't for public knowledge. What you really think about your boss, for example. Your wants and desires. What you hate and what you love." Anna had to consciously not look at Jack O'Neill. "And every person develops the ability to shield those thoughts from the outside world. Some to a greater degree than others."

"And Jack can - shield? - his thoughts better than others?" Daniel supposed he shouldn't be so surprised. He was probably closer to Jack O'Neill than anyone else, and even he had trouble figuring Jack out sometimes. "And even if you can't read Jack, you were with the three of us the other night."

"Shielding's not a conscious skill." Anna took a few steps away. Daniel automatically followed. "And telepathy takes some effort. I don't go around snooping into people's thoughts without permission, Dr. Jackson. Particularly without cause. And never to satisfy a purely personal curiosity." Even with cause, and for her own survival not merely curiosity, she was uneasy with the snooping she'd been doing the past few minutes. "Dr. Jackson..."

At that moment, several things happened at once. There was a shout from a floor above that echoed down the opening. There was a crunching, cracking roar of concrete breaking away and falling. Daniel, standing directly below the hole in the ceiling, looked up at the approaching avalanche.

Anna blamed her slow reaction on the drugs still in her system. It seemed to take forever, an eternity in slow motion. Jagged chunks of concrete rained down from above. Daniel was struck by the leading edge before Anna recovered her presence of mind to fling a telekinetic shield over the fallen archeologist.

When the dust and debris had settled, Daniel lay still under Anna's dome of protection. The rest of his teammates jumped forward to help him and were stalled by the invisible barrier.

Jack whirled on the woman he'd thought he'd known. "Get this down. Now. He needs help. Medical attention."

Anna already knew that, as her barrier disintegrated and she joined him beside Daniel. The left side of her body was on fire. She could feel Daniel's blood, a warm and coppery tide ebbing, ebbing. "Get back. I can help him."

"You've already helped enough." Jack said furiously. Anna only gave him a calm look before turning to where Dr. Frasier was kneeling beside Daniel, her hands pressed over the pumping wound in his shoulder, as she called for assistance, equipment.

Anna laid her hands over Dr. Frasier's and met panicked brown eyes with her own, as deep and green as the forest. "It's severed the artery. His shoulder is shattered, his arm in pieces. You can't help him. I can."

"No. No. I have to..."

"Janet." Anna said her name, only her name, yet it broke through to the trained professional inside the scared woman.

Many things ran through the doctor's mind in that split second. What she'd seen. What she'd heard. What she knew. What she hoped. And most of all, the picture of Ayiana, the supposed Ancient and ancestor, kneeling, as the woman beside her was kneeling, calm and confident as she healed Janet's sick friends.

Dr. Frasier surrendered her place and Anna blocked the protests and questions that followed, leaving the doctor to deal with them. Only Daniel mattered, and he was losing his battle.

She descended quickly into herself, into the body under her hands. Even horribly injured, the bright, white light of Daniel's soul pulsed strong. She touched, connected, adjusted her own energies to mesh before turning her attention to the physical injury.

Crushed flesh, shattered bone, pulverizing pain, she took them into herself, made them her own, perceived the insult of injury in her own cells. And healed them.

Teal'c had hauled Jack away from Daniel and Anna. Jack shrugged off the restraint and watched the woman he loved do the impossible. Her eyes took on that eerily golden glow, her hands as well. The blood flowing from Daniel's mangled side slowed to a trickle. Stopped. The jagged edges of bone and exposed muscle sank back into their proper places and were covered by magically repaired skin. Within a span of moments, Daniel was completely restored.

Anna's hands fell away and Daniel gave a huge sigh. He opened his eyes and looked around, lifted his hand to watch it as he closed and opened a fist. He wiggled his shoulder experimentally and felt around with the other hand for remnants of the injury. With his newly healed hand he took one of Anna's. "Thank you." Anna gave him a tired smile.

"That was... Incredible." Janet commented quietly from the other side of Daniel.

_That's impossible_ kept repeating itself in Jack's mind. He had only accusations left. "If you can do that, why aren't you working in a hospital somewhere? Why are you wasting that being some singer in a two-bit club."

Anna sighed to herself as the pain increased. It would be an instant, but it would be complete. "Because I've learned that I can't heal everyone. And power always has a price."

Janet gasped in horror, and the others watched, as Daniel's injury appeared on Anna's body. The crushed shoulder and arm, waves of blood. It grew to fullness and disappeared quickly, a matter of seconds only, but no one in the room doubted that Anna was paying for the use of her power.

She faltered and nearly keeled over, but caught herself. There was one more thing she had to do. "Please, everyone, move back." She hoped she had enough strength left.

She stood and moved to the clear space underneath the hole she'd created. Reaching deep, she found the core of her gifts. Tapping her own clean, white power, Anna lifted her arms.

Sensing upward, she created a barrier, gently moving the bystanders away. She could see, in her mind, how it needed to be. Using the raw materials from the destruction, she began to create.

What the others saw was the holes above them disappearing, repairing themselves out of thin air, the concrete rubble around them slowly disappearing. In no longer than it had taken her to heal Daniel, Anna had also reconstructed three floors of Stargate Command.

In the silence that followed, Jack watched Anna lower her arms. She staggered and looked at him blankly. He heard her faint "Oh, dear."

Anna didn't know, because she was unconscious, that she was caught before she hit the floor, and cradled gently in the arms of the man who'd brought her there.

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Jack pulled his truck in behind the red convertible at the curb in front of her house. He turned the key in the ignition and sat back against the plush leather seat with a sigh. It had been 33 hours and twenty minutes since he'd last seen Anna Jordan.

_But who was counting?_

Her fainting spell had lasted long enough to worry him, though she had discounted it when she'd finally woken up. She'd "used up her energy reserves doing such strenuous workings so close together" - _whatever that meant._

What it had meant was that she needed to eat. A lot. Even if that meant a double helping of the cafeteria special. Now he understood why she was always hungry. Apparently, doing witch stuff burned calories like they were going out of style.

Carter had handled the KP duties, and getting Anna dressed. And he hadn't noticed, _at all_, what standard Air Force issue black T-shirt and khakis did to her figure. No, sir. He'd been all business, no-nonsense, completely professional through the following briefing where Daniel and Carter had told her about the Star Gate.

She'd ignored him completely.

Anna had accepted the facts easily enough. She'd found the videos and other visual records fascinating, the concept intriguing, the Goa'uld contemptible. She'd had questions, certainly, particularly about her own place in the story, once Dr. Frasier had explained her theories. And at the end she'd seemed open to continuing a dialogue with Carter and Frasier about the possibilities involving her heritage.  
  
She'd pleaded tiredness, which again no one doubted, least of all him. He could see her wilting, dark circles under her eyes. When General Hammond had offered to have him drive her home, she refused with an cool "I'm sure Colonel O'Neill has more important things to do."

So Carter had taken care of that as well. He'd last seen Anna as the elevator doors closed, cutting off her impassive stare. That had been 33 hours and... twenty-two minutes ago.

But he _was not_ counting.

What he had been doing was quite a bit of thinking. It wasn't a habit he wanted to get into. Thinking. About life. Love. Family. The important things, Daniel would say. The things that really mattered. He hated thinking about that stuff. It made his head hurt.

His life was just fine as it was. Simple. Uncomplicated. Nothing at all to think about. That was exactly the way he liked it.

He had a good job with just enough responsibility, a quiet house to retreat to when he wanted to be alone, good friends to hang with when he didn't. He had enough money for his needs and a comfortable retirement whenever he got around to retiring. He had things to do, places to go.

He had... _Nothing_, he realized bleakly. And if he didn't fix things up with Anna, his life would continue along the same as always. Going nowhere with no one. At the end of the day, when all was said and done, his life outside of Cheyenne Mountain was pretty bleak.

After Sara and Charlie, he'd decided it was - safer - not to get too close to anybody. That way he wouldn't have to worry about what he would feel if something bad happened to them.

But there'd been Ska'ara and Daniel, who wouldn't let him stay isolated. And Kowalski - _Damn the son of a bitch for getting killed_! And later Carter, beautiful and brainy, and Teal'c's strong and steady friendship. Kynthia and Laira, who'd taught him how to love again. They'd made him remember that love was worth feeling, even if it meant the pain of loss.

He'd come a long way since that day when a single bullet from his gun had killed Charlie. All the way back from actively wanting to die, to just existing day to day _not_ actively wanting to die, to something that actually resembled a life.

Then, along came Anna. He loved her. He knew he did. What he'd had to decide, in all that thinking, was if he wanted to keep on loving her, or if it would be better to let her go. To his way of thinking it was risky either way. It might be safer to be alone, but it was an absolutely boring lifestyle. There were, however, issues with accepting her. Big ones.

She was... different. He sometimes had a big problem with different. But... Still...

Maybe she didn't love him anymore. He'd hurt her pretty bad, both physically and emotionally. She must feel like she'd been betrayed, or worse. If there was a worse. She must feel....

_Stupid, Jack. Get out of the damn truck and go ask her how she feels._

He slammed the door and started up the walk. He had a brief thought that she might not be home, despite the fact that her car was still here. The thought went away when he started feeling the air thicken around him. It got hard to breath, hard to walk through. Each breath, each step was a struggle. He supposed it could be some kind of spell she'd left like a trap, but it - _felt_ - very personal. She didn't want him there.

_Wasn't that too damn bad?_

Getting mad seemed to help, making the last few steps to the front door easier. He rapped on the wood. "Anna? Come on, let me in."

The air thickened again and tried to push him back, but he held his ground and knocked again. When there was no answer, he tried the doorknob - and jerked his arm back when an electrical shock banged up his arm. "That's not fair, Anna. You open this door right now. I'm not going away until we talk, so you may as well let me in."

The air - _the feeling in the air_ - seemed to change from defiance to guilt - _against her religion to hurt somebody, _he thought snottily, shaking his tingling hand back to life - then to resignation. He heard the deadbolt snick back, the door lock turn, and the thickness evaporated around him.

_Okay, let's see what else she has planned. _He tapped at the knob at couple times, but he remained un-zapped when he turned it. Entering the foyer, he looked around suspiciously, sure she would try something else. But the first floor was empty as far as he could see. It - _felt_ - empty. Unwelcoming. _Upstairs, then. _

He never would have admitted it if there'd been anyone with him, but he could - _feel_ - her, in his head. Like the air outside, he knew where she was, sense her presence. _And if that didn't sound like he was going around the woo-woo bend!_

He was cautious when he got to the top of the stairs and started down the hall. The house itself was quiet. Too quiet. He stopped in front of her closed bedroom door. _In here._

He called to mind the layout of the room from his previous visits. It was as reflective of the woman who slept there as the rest of her house.

Comfortably worn antique rugs were strewn over glowing wood. An overstuffed chair in a warm fabric sat with a floor lamp in an alcove lined with more books. A vanity that reminded him of his mother was covered with dainty, female pots and bottles. The large dresser matched the four-poster bed. A bed covered in crisp white sheets and fluffy pillows that caused him more than a few twinges as he - unintentionally, of course - imagined Anna there.

As wary as if this was his most important black ops mission, Jack slipped through the door. Anna was curled up in the window seat overlooking her back garden, clutching a pillow. Her pale pink satin robe made her skin fragile, translucent porcelain. Her green eyes were vulnerable, with the traces of tears trailing down her bruised cheek. Because he wanted to wipe those traces away, he put his hands firmly in his pockets as he came to stand near her.

"You've been crying." _Oh, for cryin' out loud, O'Neill, that was brilliant!_

Anna closed her eyes and sighed as another tear squeezed out. She didn't think it was possible to hurt so much. "I don't have anything more to say to you."

"Good. You can just listen then." He rocked on his toes, trying to decide how to start, and decided to go with what came naturally. "I guess you're pretty steamed, and you have a right to be, but I'm not here to apologize, because if the same set of circumstances happened again I'd do exactly the same thing."

Anna didn't respond, only kept looking out the window. _Well, he hadn't expected this to be easy. _

"You know what we're up against now. With the Goa'uld you don't get any second chances. You get them before they get you or you end up dead - or worse, you don't end up dead. You wake up and there's a snake running your life and you can't do a damn thing about it."

"I'm not a Goa'uld." She said flatly, still not looking at him.

"No, you're not. But I didn't have any way of knowing that."

"You could have trusted me." _There_,_ of course_, that was the cruelest hurt. She'd trusted him with everything, and he'd thrown it back in her face. With his fist.

"I did." At her mocking look, he continued. "I did trust you, on some level. Otherwise I would have just shot you."

Anna tossed down the pillow and shoved past him. "And that's supposed to be the good part?"

"I said you have right to be mad." She crossed her arms and turned her back on him. "Look, all I'm asking for is the same as you, Anna. You want me to accept you for who you are - for all of who and what you are. Don't you think I deserve at least the same consideration here? This is what I am, what I do. It's not like you didn't know I was a Colonel in the Air Force. If that was going to be a big stumbling block you shouldn't have let things go so far between us."

Because she'd already thought of that, and didn't like him bringing it up, she ignored it. "Is that what you came to say?"

"Part of it." _Damn. It didn't look like she was softening any. Time to bring up some of that stuff he didn't want to think about_. "Anna." He took a step towards her, but stopped cold when she stiffened, something he didn't want to identify as fear in her eyes.

He tried again, more gently. "Anna, we had something pretty good between us. I know things have gotten kind of.... screwed up. And I guess you think that's my fault." _Oh, she had that sarcastic look down pat. _"Yeah, well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. The thing to remember is that we had something special, something... important - to both of us - and I'm not willing to just give it up." _Okay, enough said, O'Neill, time for a tactical retreat. _"That's what I came to say. When you want to talk, you know where to find me."

Anna didn't answer him, and he didn't expect her to. With a sigh he walked to the door.  
  
_Coward_, Anna berated herself as she watched him walk away, trying to shake off the hold of old fears. Hadn't he just said everything she'd wanted to hear? Was she going to remain alone for the rest of her life because of her pride? Pride was such a small thing, in reality, and no comfort when faced with a solitary, barren future.

Her choices seemed clear: Remain alone with her pride intact and her heart broken, or take a chance on the man she loved. She spoke quickly, before she could change her mind. "Why?"

Jack froze, his hand on the doorknob. "Why what?"

"Why is what we had so important?"

_Okay, Jack. How're you going to answer the jackpot question_? His conscience and his own pride demanded only the truth. "Because I'm in love with you."

He didn't wait for her response, but stopped when her hand covered his on the knob. He looked up, surprised, to meet her eyes. They weren't all gooey and lovey-dovey like he might have wanted, or sarcastic, or even angry like he might have expected. They were clear and even. Serious. "Say that again."

_Christ, he didn't think he could say it the first time! _Jack took a deep breath, and let it out in a rush. "Are you sure you can't just read my mind?" He asked plaintively.

"You know I can't. And even if I could, I wouldn't. I need to hear you say it, Jack, at least once."

"If you're sure once will be enough...." She didn't laugh, only waited patiently. "Okay. Here goes." His nerves stretched tight and his muscles tensed for rejection. "I love you, Anna."

Her fingers twined their hands together. "Why didn't you say that ten minutes ago?"

Jack shrugged. "I guess I had some other things that I needed to say first." He took her other hand and held it as well, and allowed himself the smallest space to hope. "I meant what I said, Anna. I'm not giving you up without a fight."

"We can fight if you want," she moved closer the step that separated them,"But I think we can find a better way to occupy our time." Anna breathed in the smell of him, the feel of him, the knowledge that she didn't have to live without him when there was another choice. "If you still want me."

_Ah, there was that smile. _The ice that was heavy in his stomach thawed, then heated as she started - nibbling. _Oh. My. God._ "Anna." Came out as a strangled moan. He fisted his hands in the thick mahogany silk of her hair. "Be sure. I don't think I could stand it if you're not sure."

"I'm sure, Jack." Her hands drifted to the lapels of her robe. _God, he'd forgotten that's all she was wearing. _The pink satin parted, exposed the curve of bare shoulders, bare - everything - as it fell to the floor. "Stay with me tonight."

"Okay. Yeah. I'll..." The breath clogged in his throat, she was so beautiful. His hand slid from her hair to glide along the satin curve of her shoulder. When she startled at the contact his eyes leapt to meet hers. However confident her words, those eyes were full of nerves and apprehension. "Anna?"

She wanted this, wanted him. This had been her decision. But she knew the pounding of her heart was as much from panic as from desire. "I'm sure, Jack. It's just... been a while since I've done this."

"So we'll take it slow." He ran his hands up and down her back. "Relax." He whispered as his lips trailed over her cheek. "It's like riding a bicycle. You never forget once you learn."

How could she tell him that she'd never learned this lesson? That she'd never felt like this before? It was so obviously trite and cliche. She steadied herself and reached for the wanting, setting nerves aside, or at least letting them sink underneath. "I don't think I want to relax."

"Okay." Still he stroked, his hands gentle, his lips tempting, gliding along her throat, arousing and soothing at the same time. "I'm not going to ask you again."

Her skin began to shiver. "I don't want you to." The shiver worked it's way to her belly. She used her own hands to trace the shape of his face. "You won't have to."

"Good." His teeth scraped along her jaw, closing lightly over her chin before moving to her lips. "Because I really suck at small talk."

Her laugh was breathy, not her own and cut off completely as his mouth took hers, hard and hot, in a proprietary kiss that was so different from what they'd shared before. The leap from playful to possessive was so fast she could do nothing but cling while he ravaged.

Never, she thought as her mind reeled and her body strained against his. She had never felt so needy, so out of control. She wanted him. To touch him, taste him, feel him, in every pore. On a jolt of need she answered the demand of his kiss with demands of her own, her fingers digging into strong muscles of shoulder and back.

It wasn't just wanting, she realized dizzily. _This was craving._

Her scent was everywhere, her hair, her skin, the very air seemed bathed in it. The delicate, silky texture of that fragrance misted over his mind. Her quiet, throaty moans when he touched, tasted, sprinted through his blood.

The light was changing, day to night. He wanted to see the twilight glow move over her, watch it catch in the green jewels of her eyes. He wanted the darkness of her hair spread over the white of the sheets. He wanted her skin, blushing under his fingers, her voice to call out his name.

His. Only his.

And she would, he promised himself as he lifted her in his arms. Before they were done, she would.

He laid her on the white sheets and sat beside her, looking his fill. Golden light poured through the windows. White sheets, mahogany silk, flush of heat. _Oh, yeah._

What was he doing? she wondered, struggling not to cover herself from his searing eyes. Had she done something wrong already? "Jack?"

"Damn." He said conversationally. "I've got a problem."

"What?" _Oh, Goddess, not now. Please, not now_. "What's wrong?"

"I have way too many clothes on, and it's going to take way too long to get undressed."

Her laugh started out shaky, but firmed as her courage returned. "Is that all?"

The nerves disappeared from her eyes, replaced by that weird glow. He felt a tingling all over his body that had nothing to do with seeing the woman on the bed beside him and everything to do with the witch. In an instant, he was naked down to his dog tags, watching his neatly folded clothes settle on the side chair, his shoes sliding underneath. When he turned back, her eyes were simply green again, though wary, watching for his reaction.

_What the hell? _"Cool." And was rewarded by the shy smile he so loved. She held out her arms, but he only took her hands, lightly nibbling on her knuckles. "This might take me a while." He didn't know how, but he was going to give it a try. For both of them.

"That's okay." Her breath caught and released on a sigh. "Take your time."

It wasn't easy, the need to simply possess was huge, but he didn't rush. He used just his lips on her hand, just his hands on her arm, nuzzling, massaging away her anxiety until it drained away.

He could _feel_ it draining away. Feel the lingering tension being replaced by something looser, warmer. He went slowly, for both of them, savoring, seeking more of her surrender.

Her breath trembled out, and she arched under his searching lips as they feasted on the long line of her throat. Flowed back in a rush when his tongue slid toward her breast.

Reverently, his hands, his mouth moved over her, exploring the slope of her shoulder, the slim line of her torso, nuzzling the curve of her belly. He felt the muscles under his lips quiver. _Felt_ his own jerk in sympathetic unison at the friction of her skin against his.

The thrill spread through her, slowly, so slowly, fingers of pleasure that rose towards aching. As the aches built she fisted her hands in the sheets to stop herself from begging him to go faster.

She wanted to touch him, as he was touching her, to comb her fingers through his hair, to run them over his body, but was afraid that if she released her anchor, even for an instant, that she would fly away and be lost in the swirling pleasure.

He nipped lightly at her thigh and she turned her face to the mattress, choking back a moan. He slipped and slid along the edge of heat, turning moan into sob, and sob into quick, gasping cries.

Her need was his need, and still he didn't rush. His mouth, his hands were everywhere, urging her higher. Seeing her eyes go shocked, go blind as she rose up was glorious. When she went limp, he moved up her body with lazy kisses. And wanted more.  
  
His need was her need. The _feeling_ in her mind, her body. The connection she'd looked for and finally found. Her heart was thudding under his mouth, and its beat leapt faster when her fingers tangled in his hair, pressed him closer, then streaked down his back. She pressed her body along the length of his and found his mouth in a desperate kiss.

"Please. Please." She pleaded, though she wasn't sure for what. This landscape was totally foreign to her, the destination an unknown heaven only glimpsed from afar. She bucked under his urging hand, those clever fingers, and charged towards madness.

When she was helpless and shuddering, he crushed his mouth to hers, swallowing her cry as he dove into her. Moved with her, the fast rise and fall. Each time her breath would catch, his blood beat faster.

He watched her, as the lasts glints of sunlight moved across her face and caught in the depthless green of her eyes. A glowing, that came from nowhere and everywhere, filled the darkening room.

She lifted a hand to his cheek, and there was wonder in her voice when she said his name. His. Only his. "Jack."

The beauty of it all but drowned him, as everything shattered.

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In Jack's opinion, one of the best things about making love was floating along on the warmth of satisfaction after. There was something incredibly soft and lovely about a woman's body that made it the perfect resting place. So he snuggled in as dusk took over the room.

Anna could feel his heart beating hard against her own. Not nearly as used to cuddling in the aftermath of making love, she wondered if he was going to fall asleep. _That was a good sign. Wasn't it?_ She hated herself for being stupid. Hated knowing that now that her mind was clearing, the doubts could creep in.

She could hardly ask him if it was good for him without sounding ridiculous. But it didn't stop her from wanting to know.

He could feel her mind working a mile a minute, and just as a precaution, because it never hurt to be prepared, he tucked her a little closer. "You know, for a minute there, I thought we were glowing."

"We probably were." She tried to speak easily, normally. Except this situation wasn't normal for her. And it wasn't easy.

"Damn. I'm better than I thought." He nuzzled her ear to encourage her laugh.

"I don't think that's possible." _Oh, yes, she did love him. _Wanting to see him, she gestured absently towards the night stand where a candle flickered to life. "The glowing's sort of a... witch thing."

"A witch thing." He forced himself not to stare at the glimmering flame, wondering if he might get used to those casual gestures someday. He picked up her hand and brought it to his lips. "You thought it might happen. That's why you said you wouldn't be able to hide it once I came to your bed."

"I knew it was a possibility. You might have been a little startled if it had happened out of the blue, so to speak."

"I don't know, I am pretty good." He raised up on one elbow so he could see her face better.

"Yes, you are. More than you know." She found herself struck once more by the rugged handsomeness of him; mesmerized by the wonder that a man like Jack O'Neill would not only like her, but want her. _Love her. _Of their own accord, it seemed, her fingers traced his features. "Though I didn't understand how much more there could be. How could I have known that love could make such a difference?" The tip of her index finger moved as lightly as a butterfly over his lips. "How could I have known, when I've never..."

"Never what?" She closed up, as completely as a clam. The transformation was astonishing. Then it hit him, everything she'd said about her marriage and her husband. _"My wedding night was a disaster, and it went downhill from there." _"Wait a minute. You've never... Never?"

"That's not a fact you were ever supposed to know." She was twisting her fingers together, her nerves back in full force. Jack grabbed both her hands, capturing them above her head. His irritation, always close to the surface when faced with the injustice of her former life, was starting to spike. It was the first time he'd ever felt compelled to punch a dead man.  
  
"You mean to tell me, you were married to that..." _Rat bastard, son-of-a-bitch_, "Man - and I'm using the term loosely - for fifteen years - and he never once took the time to make sure you got as much pleasure as he did?"

Anna shrugged awkwardly in his grip. A move that said _it doesn't matter_. He wondered how long it had taken her to convince herself?

"He said... He said it was my fault." Anna watched Jack's whiskey brown eyes turn to black lightening. "And we weren't... intimate... after Maia was born."

"And you believed him." He said it as a statement, not a question. _Of course, she'd believed him. _Whatever trumped up reasons he'd told her, she'd believed him. He pushed away from her to sit on the side of the bed.

"It doesn't matter." She could feel the tears backing up in her throat and struggled to dam them up. "I'm sorry."

"If you think it doesn't matter then you're wrong. You have nothing to be sorry for. I'm not angry at you. Damn it, Anna. If you apologize again I am going to get pissed off." He saw the single tear course down her cheek. Because of it, and the apprehension in her eyes, he grabbed for his temper.

"Jack." She wasn't sure what to do, so she reached out to touch his shoulder. He jerked away, but not before the violence spilled over to her through the contact. The connection, mind to mind, that she'd been missing with him clicked into full effect.

"Don't." He snapped at her, every nerve inside him tensed. When he turned to her, before he turned to her, he saw her quietly pleading eyes. Clamping down tightly on his feelings he gently picked up her hand from the covers and kissed the palm. "Just give me a minute, okay?"

When his eyes met hers again she saw the anger was still there, alive and restless, fierce enough to steal her breath, but his lips had been gentle. How could there be such ferocity side by side with such tenderness? Through their link, she felt his struggle to control it as it twisted through him.

To give them both time to settle, she slipped from the bed to pick up her robe and put it on. Her first instinct was to retreat, to avoid any confrontation, to ignore the welter of emotions running amok in both of them, and she cursed herself for falling into that typical and pathetic mind set.

_No. Not again. Not ever again._

Jack still sat on the edge of the bed, his head cradled in his hands. She knelt in front of him, and when he looked up, laid her mouth on his in a soft kiss that soothed them both.

"Anna, can you understand that it tears me up inside to know what you went through? Especially when I can't do anything about it."

"I think so." Taking a deep breath, she continued. "I forget sometimes that I'm not that person anymore. That I made myself over into someone different. That I changed my future." She kissed him on both cheeks. "I've been so many things in my life, Jack. Some I wanted to be, some I didn't. Some I liked and some I didn't. But I've never been a woman until right now. And I think I like this best of all."

"Oh, yeah?" Settled and calmed as quickly as the fury had built, he pulled her onto his lap and moved the robe aside to expose her shoulder. "What part did you like best, exactly?"

"I'm not sure. I may need another example before I can say." When he laughed and tumbled her onto the bed, she found she could ask after all. "What about you?"

"You want to know how it was for me?" He got the shy smile with tempting eyes and for once, couldn't find the words. He glanced around and settled on the flickering candle. _Oh, yeah_. "It was pure magic, Anna. Pure magic." He bent his head to create the spell once more.

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	5. Transpositions Epilogue

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The next morning Jack drifted awake as the sun crept into the room. It was the only way to wake up in his opinion. The perfect morning after a perfect night. His only problem at the moment seemed to be that his arms were empty.

He rolled over and reached out, needing to feel her, warm and soft from sleep, and kept on reaching. His searching fingers found only air. That popped his eyes open and his senses to alert as he scanned the room. He was alone. Even the depression in the bed where she had slept beside him was cool to the touch.

_Where was she? _He reached for his pants and firmly and deliberately ignored that corner of his mind that told him exactly where she was. The house wasn't that big. He'd just find her the old fashioned way.

Downstairs in the kitchen Anna's mind was too preoccupied to be aware of the man waking up above her. She kneaded the sweet dough she'd started when she'd gotten up, her thoughts focused elsewhere. It was an action she could do on automatic and she found the rhythmic folding and pressing soothing.

When she sensed him behind her in the kitchen door she didn't even hope he'd missed the minute break in her rhythm. "There's fresh coffee if you want." She said without turning to him. She'd never had a morning after before, and hated feeling awkward with him.

He didn't answer as he moved across the room behind her to get a mug and pour a cup. Her nerves forced her to speak. "I thought you'd like some cinnamon rolls before you go into work today."

"I'll take your cinnamon rolls any time, but I'm not going into work today." Jack took a sip of coffee and waited her out.

"You're not?" Surprise made her glance at him, he was dressed only in his jeans. Shyness, with him, with the situation, made her look away.

"One way or another, I wasn't going to be in very good shape to lead a team through the Stargate."

"I see." Though she didn't. She grabbed a rolling pin and began to work the dough into a large rectangle. "If you had plans...."

"The only plans I had involved staying in bed with you all day." He took another ruminating swallow. "I woke up wanting you, but you were gone."

"I --" Anna cut off her automatic apology. _New habits, Anna. _"I had some thinking to do and I wasn't being very successful lying in bed next to you."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Good. She wasn't so nervous that she couldn't smile at him. "What kind of thinking needed that much concentration?"

Anna rubbed softened butter over the flattened dough. "I was thinking about you, and Richard, and --"

Jack cut her off in a quick move that had her chin in his fingers, turning her widened eyes to his. "Don't ever compare me to him, Anna. He never loved you. I do."

"See." Anna sighed, setting the rolling pin aside. "You never even met Richard and you understand what was wrong better than I did. What kind of a fool does that make me, Jack?"

"It doesn't make you a fool." He backed off, his point made. "It means you tried to make it work. You stayed with him for - what? - fifteen years?"

"There's more to love than loyalty." Anna shook a canister of sugar and cinnamon over the buttered dough. "And loyalty means more than staying because you don't know where else to go."

"You said you were glad you stayed." She sent him another quick look before concentrating on rolling her dough into a perfect log.

"For Maia. I stayed for her, not for me." Slices of roll lined up like soldiers in the pan. "I had a daughter that I loved, and I wasn't going to abandon her or my responsibilities, no matter how empty the rest of my life felt."

"Do you want me to tell you that you did the right thing?"

She shook her head. "No. I know I did the right thing. It's just...." The pan went into the warming oven. "Humiliating - to reach what most people would consider middle age and realize exactly how much of life you've missed."

"That just means we get to make up for lost time." His arms encircled her waist as he nuzzled into her hair. "Those have to puff up some now, right? Ever made love in a kitchen before?"

Anna chuckled, turning into his embrace. "No, that would be a first for me. Everything about you is a first for me, Jack."

"Remind me to tell you about Jonas Quinn sometime."

"That would be sometime later."

"Oh, yeah. A lot later."

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By the time it was dark Anna had experienced quite a few firsts and she felt very smug about each one. It might have taken her a while to get to school, but she was a very good student.

They had made love in the kitchen, and all of the rooms of the first floor, besides gorging on gooey cinnamon rolls and - much, much later - delivered pizza. She knew she should feel sick and exhausted. Instead, she was content and relaxed, and thinking about the left-overs in the fridge.

They had finally made it back to the bedroom and Jack had found it a reason to celebrate. Again. After, he'd rolled onto his back, taking her with him. She now rested draped over him, his heartbeat strong and sure under her ear.

Curious, Jack lifted his hand and watched the play of light and color shimmer across his skin. The glowing hadn't been as obvious during the day. "So, are you going to tell me about this 'witch thing' that's making us glow all the time?"

Anna regarded him, her chin resting on her crossed hands. "Are you really sure you want to know?"

"No." His snorted chuckle made her head bounce. "But it's there, right?"

Anna joined her hand to his and the glowing intensified. "It's called a Bonding. The glowing's only a sort of a symptom."

"Bonding. That sounds... permanent." The look he gave her was serious.

"It is, usually. It's a rare phenomenon, even among witches. I've never heard of it happening with someone who wasn't a witch." She moved off him to sit on the bed and Jack sat up to face her. "Hold up your hand again." He did, and with a focused thought, she had the light returning to play around it. "This is your field of energy. Everyone, everything has one, because everything is made up of the same basic building blocks."

"My field of energy. Is that like my aura? Cool."

"Aura, if you like." She held up her own hand, with her own energy field in evidence. "The Bonding means that at their most basic level, our energies combine rather than repel. The glow is the excess energy that's created by the fusion." She moved her palm slowly toward his. Jack could see the way the colors of his aura intensified and almost reached out to hers, like two amoebas merging.

"So it's like magnets, kinda, right? If you hold 'em the right way they stick together, and if you hold 'em the wrong way they won't." He moved his hand away from hers and back again, watching the joining and the separation.

"Very much like that. But it's not only a physical Bonding. It takes place in the mind, as well, connecting us."

"So you _can_ read my mind." Even loving her, the thought made him uneasy.

"It's not like that. I can tell where you are, a little of what you're doing, what you're feeling. But it's more like a... a GPS system than telepathy. I can't read your thoughts." Seeing that did little to reassure him, she continued. "I'm a high level empathic healer, a ten-plus rating. The same as a telekinetic, but I barely register as a telepath."

"Yeah, right. Okay." Since what she described was exactly what he experienced, he had to believe her.

"Jack, I..." _No. She refused to apologize. He would deal with it, or he wouldn't._ "There's other parts of you that interest me a lot more than your thoughts."

When he looked up, surprised, she laid her lips on his with enough heat to make him forget his uneasiness. "Oh, yeah? What parts exactly?"

With a temptress's smile she moved over him. Seduction was new to her, but she thought she could fumble her way through. "Let me show you."

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Over breakfast the next morning, Jack brought up something else that had been nagging on his conscience. "Anna, can I ask you another question?" He said casually, stuffing his mouth with a bite of fresh omelette.

She glanced up at him over the morning paper, very much aware of how cozy and - well, coupled - it was to have breakfast with him. "You're just full of curiosity these days."

"Yeah. Well..." He swiped a napkin across his mouth, shrugged a shoulder uncomfortably. "It's just... I was wondering why you waited so long to heal your cheek."

"My cheek?" She reflexively put her hand to her face, though Jack saw it was to the wrong side.

"Yeah, you know, where I..." He made a punching motion toward her left eye. "I was just noticing, you know, you still had a pretty good shiner when I first got here, but it was gone the next morning. And I was just wondering why you didn't heal it right away."

"I guess I forgot about it. But it wouldn't have made any difference. I can't heal myself, Jack. It's one of the drawbacks of my particular manifestation. None of my talents can affect me directly."

"Then what happened to it?" Jack wondered idly if he could get Anna to make some pancakes, too. The woman was a wonder with breakfast.

"The only thing I can think of is that it's another side effect of the Bonding." She rose to take her coffee cup to the window, thinking the process through. "When we're... Close, physically and emotionally--"

"You mean when we're making love."

"When we're making love." She agreed with that blush he loved to see. "A witch's gifts can be shared across the Bond. That means that for all intents and purposes, you healed me. Probably the first time we were together."

"That's... weird."

"I wish I knew more about it, but it might not pertain to our situation anyway."

"Because I'm not a witch."

"Yes. Though... there's something...." She came back to him and placed her fingers on his forehead, probing against the slick shield in her way. She didn't really know what she was looking for in the first place. "I wish Finn was here. He knows more about these mind games than I do."

"Hey. Quit it. That tickles." He moved her hand away. It had felt like somebody poking a feather through his skull. "Who's Finn?"

"See. You shouldn't even be able to feel that. I wonder..." She was looking at him, or rather, looking at his head, like a specimen, speculatively, answering his question reflexively. "Hmm. Finn's my brother."

"Your brother? I thought you didn't have any siblings."

"So did I. So did he. Until he became the head of the Irish Council and had access to all the genetic records. He found me only weeks before I left New York. It was one of the last straws for me, in fact."

"You said you went to Ireland for a while. Was it to see him?" Jack found himself jealous of her brother and tried, for her sake, to put it aside.

"Yes. It was wonderful. He wanted me to stay there with him. To be a family, even if it was a small one. But it wasn't my place, and my being there caused trouble for him. So I came back to the States."

"Why would having a sister cause anybody trouble?"

"It wasn't because I was Finn's sister, but because I had been cast out. It's a very serious thing for a witch to be shunned." It shouldn't hurt so much, after so many years, but it did. It still did.

"You said you left on your own."

She shrugged, tried to make it unconcerned. "It all depends on your point of view. It didn't matter to me, but Finn's position is important, and I didn't want to cause him any harm."

"Council-shmouncil. You were his sister. Why didn't he use his position to help you."

She laughed. "Finn would agree with you. He would have tried, if I'd let him. I hope you get to meet him sometime."

"Yeah, me too." He'd have something to say to that guy. _Ya sure yu betcha_.

"Don't worry about me, Jack. I've chosen my way, and it lead me to you. I'm not going to regret any of it because of that." She came back to him and he gathered her onto his lap. "This is where I belong. You're who I belong with. That's all I need to know."

"Okay. Then that's good enough for me." He held her close as the sun rose and the birds sang, and both of them were content.

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Two days and nights later, Jack lay wakeful before dawn. It had been a peaceful interlude for him, something he'd experienced too rarely in his dangerous life. He was ready for it to be a feeling he had a little more often.

Anna was snuggled into his chest, deeply asleep. He hated to wake her, but.... "Anna." He whispered in her ear. No response. He tried again, a little louder. "Anna." All she did was burrow closer with a protesting sound.

"Anna." He shook her this time. "Are you awake? We have to talk."

"Hmm. 'Kay." She sighed and wrapped her arms around him. "Later."

"We need to talk now, baby." He kissed her lightly on the temple, the only part of her he could reach. "I've got to go back to work today."

That woke her all the way up. She pulled back to blink at him with sleep heavy eyes for a long moment. "All right. You should have a good breakfast before you go." She made to get up to fix it, but he caught her to him again.

"We've got time for that later. Anna," _God, he was bad at this! _"You know every time I go through the Stargate there's a chance I might not come back. We've got enemies besides the Goa'uld. Then there's natural disasters, misunderstandings with the natives, even something wrong with the Gate could keep us stranded out there with no way home."

"I know what you do is dangerous, Jack. Why are you telling me this?" But an answer came to her. "Are you going to use this as an excuse to walk away from me? From us?"

"Part of me thinks I should." He brushed a strand of hair back from her face. "Part of me thinks it would have been better if I'd walked away weeks ago."

"If that's what you think, why do all this? Why tell me you love me? Why let me tell you I love you? Was it just a convenient lie to get me into bed?"

"No. I've never lied to you. I never could." He hated to see the hurt in her eyes, though the words she'd spoken had been calm. "Any more than I could walk away from you. Because the rest of me knows that walking away from you would be like cutting off my own arm." He pulled her back tight against him and buried his face in her fragrant hair, relieved when her arms came around him. "I've lived without parts of me before, Anna. And I'd live without you. But I'd never be whole again."

She closed her eyes over tears. "You're a fraud, Jack O'Neill." He chuckled and she smiled against his lips. "You're really a hopeless romantic underneath all that macho colonel stoicism."

"Don't let it get around, okay?" Her mouth was sweet beneath his. Breakfast, even one of Anna's breakfasts,would have to wait a little longer. "I love you, Anna, but I don't want you here never knowing if I'm coming home or not."

"Is that what this is about?" She sat up to look at him. "Jack, this isn't like before, for me or for you. I know about the Stargate and I won't be waiting in the dark. I'll be with you, wherever you go, even when you don't want me to be. And I'll know if something happens to you." She raised their clasped hands between them. They were glowing faintly in the pre-dawn twilight. "You're not comfortable with this, but it's part of both of us now."

He gave her a crooked smile over their hands. "I don't know," Jack gave her knuckles a quick nibble. "I'm starting to get used to it." Her smile was all he needed to see. "You think it will work, even when I'm light years from Earth?"

"I don't know what will happen for sure, but the Bonding doesn't have any boundaries. It doesn't depend on time or space. I guess we'll just have to see." She kissed him once more and reached for her robe. "Now, what do you want for breakfast?"

Jack pulled her back down to the bed and covered her body with his own. Her robe slithered unnoticed to the floor. "I think I want to start my day with dessert."

Her sighed of agreement only intensified the pale light emanating from them.

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End file.
